The Whitehouse clearly states:

Promoting work is the key to both the 1996 reforms and the Administration’s reauthorization plan. Although nearly three million families have left welfare, most of them for work, there are still over two million families remaining on the rolls. Policymakers and welfare administrators have an obligation to help these families follow in the footsteps of those who have already abandoned welfare for work. The Administration’s plan makes a $22 billion per year Federal commitment to cash welfare, work preparation, and childcare through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Childcare and Development block grants.

When a president cuts taxes, he has to cut expenses. In this case, welfare. But Bush is doing a better job than Reagan, who seemingly said to himself: “I’m gonna cut them welfare and we’ll see how good their lazy butts get any money. Now they’ll have to rely on themselves, and not on the good will of the government! Moa-ha-ha-ha” This might be a harsh imitation, and since I don’t know much about Reagan, it’s just a fun thing. Don’t get offended if you have some weird crush on him.

To sum it up: Reagan and Bush have similar economic policies, but Bush is better prepared to deal with the outcome. Which is; plenty of jobless people that no longer have a source of steady money, and now need a job.

Giving everyone a gun to protect themselves against criminals with guns is like fighting fire with fire. That’s right, it’s not possible. If gun control was harder then you wouldn’t need a gun to protect yourself from someone with a gun, because they wouldn’t have one! Letting people buy guns easily is like saying to your children (come on, imagine you have them) “Here Billy, take this stick, and if John ever hits you with his stick, you can hit him back”, instead of teaching them to be the bigger person and NOT USE VIOLENCE! Loose gun control just makes it easier to murder people and makes everyone feel unsafe. So unsafe that they, too, feel the need of owning a gun.

Would all of the school shootings have occurred if fire arms were restricted? I believe there would have been a lot less at least. The U.S. has become a scary place where you can’t even feel safe in school. This is a country where disturbed teens can take their father’s gun and wildly shoot at their fellow classmates. Even with restrictions, criminals will be able to get weapons. But please, at least make it harder for them!

The Wikipedia sums it up pretty nice:

Summary of positions

Those who favor greater restrictions on firearms ownership and availability tend to believe some subset of:

• There is no fundamental right to own firearms.
• Guns represent a more effective method of killing than other varieties of weapons, and their elimination would lower rates of death and injury.
• Gun control legislation reduces violent crime.
• Most gun related deaths are a result of domestic violence, accidents, and suicides; thus, guns are more dangerous to the owners than to intended targets.
• In incidents where a hostile encounter with an armed criminal occurs, the criminal is often more experienced and skilled with his/her weapon; also, criminals may act in groups. Thus, guns are of little use as self defense for the typical owner.
• The presence of a gun serves more often to escalate the likelihood and/or severity of violence.
• Citizens have no need to own guns to protect themselves against crime because government is tasked with that obligation.
• Citizens need to protect themselves against crime, but owning firearms is not a good way to accomplish this.
• Citizens of First World countries today have no need to protect themselves against their governments if they vigilantly confront government malfeasance before violence is necessary. Moreover, even if such a need should arise, it would be hopeless to take up individual small arms against the modern military that a government would bring to bear.
• Guns, being devices designed to kill, raise the level of violence in any disagreement between people.
• Gun control, properly and judiciously applied, lessens (though cannot eradicate) the possibility that criminals will obtain firearms.
• Fewer guns means fewer deaths from homicide, suicide, and unintentional deaths [1].
• Firearms represent the means of 55% of suicides [2]; gun control would reduce the number of such deaths.
• Carrying a gun in a civilized society is disturbing to the unarmed.
• Resistance to a crime of violence increases the chances the victim will be injured.
• If there were no firearms, there would be no deaths caused by firearms.

 Clara in Kansas feels the same way:

“Iraq and the whole Middle East have been engaged in a civil war for centuries. We are not going to change anything over there. We need to get our people home. They can guard us against any domestic invasion. We need help.” — Clara (Lawrence, KS)

No one in America likes having troops over there, and we really haven’t done much good in the past three years. Move out before we cause more harm. We think that we have lost many soldiers, but Iraq has lost an incredibly larger amount of innocent people due to the purposeless war. I say, move out with a good pace and determination. Iraqis are really sick of us, and Americans are sick of missing loved ones. Since America practically caused the civil war going on in Iraq, we have an obligation to “fix” it. We should do it as quickly as possible though, and not linger around, hoping to get some valuable oil from those poor people.

America has become too superficial, caring about money and not about people. Is it worth causing a war to get oil to make a few people rich, than helping thousands others to have life quality? What is the money for? People! So why are we killing the same species we want money for?!

This implies that we would’ve won if we’d stayed in Vietnam. But would we really have? The U.S. was doomed to lose and withdrew in order to have “peace with honor”. This basically means, “We lost, but we don’t want to admit it”.

In this war, what exactly defines “success”? In our hurry to win, we have forgotten what the fight is about and what the prize is. I think Bush’s definition of success is to not pull out of Iraq. That would mean that he was wrong, that all the Bush-haters were right, and all that lovely sought after oil would be lost.

Being the most powerful man in the world involves a lot of pride. Withdrawing from Iraq means admitting to a mistake. Will the president be humble enough to admit to that?

Taolee quoted Malcolm X and commented:

“I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don’t believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn’t want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I’m not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn’t know how to return the treatment.”

The quote above emphasizes Malcolm’s believe in separate communities and societies. In a way you could think of it as “Separate but Equal”.

In one sense I guess Taolee is right. Malcolm wanted separate, but I don’t think he honestly wanted equal for the whites. He repeatedly called white people “white devils” in the beginning of his career. He said that black people were better and that they didn’t need to be jealous of white people. So no, Malcolm didn’t want them to be equal to him, he considered them a lower race. What is interesting is that even though Malcolm was outspokenly anti-white in the beginning, he later replied to a reporter claiming that he was racist: “I’m not anti-white, I never said I was; you did.” In this part of his life Malcolm had changed, he was no longer anti-white, but he seemed to forget that he had actually said that the black race was above the white and that they were “devils”. So yes, he had been racist, even if he suffered memory loss from that part of his life.

“But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (The Bible, Matt 5:39)

Not as Malcolm believed:

“Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” (The Bible, Deuteronomy 19. 21).

This was why all the demonstrations he led were non-violent. If he didn’t strike the white man back, then they couldn’t blame him for anything, they couldn’t say that he had started the fight. Acceptance was important to King; it was part of his religion, Christianity. In his church it didn’t matter what color of skin you had, though most of the congregation was black. Love pervaded his church life and surroundings at home, so to hate the white “devils” as Malcolm preferred to call them, was foreign to King. He was trained to love and he also was a true believer in love. He knew that integration was the only way to handle racism; otherwise the problem would never go away. Then his children would grow up in a hateful world, a world unable to live together.

The feeling to reconcile is so much better than being mad at someone Martin thought. Anger eats you from the inside, and even if you have to give up some of your pride, it is worth it. You feel more peaceful and happy, than being unforgiving towards someone, even though you think you have a valid reason. King was on the right track, he knew what the black people needed to live in harmony and be glad. And with hatred in your heart, you cannot be peaceful.

King wanted the black people to be the “bigger person”, to show everyone that they were above violence and hatred. I think all of us with siblings remember our mother telling us to be the grown-up, the bigger person when fighting with our brothers or sisters, to not hit back even if the other person started the argument.

Now it was not always easy for King to love a race that hated him. When younger he struggled a lot with the Christian command to love, especially after a white father told Martin that he couldn’t play with his son because he was “colored”. 

“Martin’s parents, however, reminded him continually that he ‘should not hate the white man,’ because ‘it was my duty as a Christian to love him.’”

(Martin & Malcolm & America, The Making Of A Dreamer)

He can’t imagine being integrated with whites, and to some extent I understand him. They have hurt him profoundly, made him believe that he is not worth as much and treated him like a dog. I would also be mad, but the solution to that kind of treatment is not to hate back. Doesn’t he realize that? Doesn’t he realize that by acting the exact same way in reverse, he is no better? Malcolm states:

“Christ wasn’t white. Christ was black. The poor, brainwashed Negro has been made to believe Christ was white to maneuver him into worshipping white men.”

Even though I strongly disagreed with his opinions, I started to like his personality. He had a beautiful smile and seemed like a wonderful and interesting person. He was captivating when he spoke, I found myself almost becoming anti-integration. He was that good.

Later in the program (and, of course, his life) he changed. Things like going to Mecca and finding out that the founder of the nation of Islam, “Honorable Elijah Muhammad” had committed adultery, made him drift away from the nation of Islam, for which he was the main leader. He lost all trust in Elijah. This man, that in Malcolm’s eyes had been so pure and good, had committed a sin. That meant that practically everything he had preached was a fraud. And who likes to be deceived? Malcolm was terribly disappointed.

When Malcolm was in Mecca he saw whites and blacks praying, worshipping and eating together. He saw that in that place there was no racism, and that made him believe that perhaps different races could live peacefully together. It changed his anti-integration views and gave him new hope for the racial issue.

At the end of his short life he had changed. From being a white-hater and black-lover, he realized that there was a way to be integrated. This eventually killed him because the nation of Islam didn’t like that he was walking away from their beliefs. So one tragic day, Malcolm X was shot.

I think that even though Malcolm X was a “messiah of hate” (from The Making Of A Bad Nigger) in the beginning of his life, he was an excellent example of that people can change for the better. He spent some time in jail and was a real “bad boy”, but when he saw proof of successful integration he believed it.

If people weren’t so afraid of the unknown, we would see that people from other cliques aren’t as different as we think they are. They go through the same things, the same problems and the same choices. we are, after all, human beings. a body, a brain and some hair. the skin is differently tinted, that’s all. but somehow we connect the skin color to a way of acting.

And that’s gotta stop.

“In 1994 the median white family held assets worth more than seven times those of the median non-white family. “

Conley’s study showed that even if the two different colored families had the same income, the white family still had seven times more property. I believe that this is because wealth births wealth, and there is still some “underground” racism. Everyone is supposed to be equal now, but there are still ghettos and black neighborhoods, and it’s hard for blacks to move into a “white” neighborhood. As Conley writes, it’s easier to accumulate wealth if your family has money. That way you can borrow from your parents if you want to buy a house and write off the mortgage tax. Ta-da! You already have more money than if you were renting.

Since, as we all know, African Americans have been mistreated in history, they haven’t had the same job opportunities as whites, or time enough to build up savings. The parents of black people had worse living conditions and unfair treatment in their youth than blacks have now. So because of that they usually have less money than whites, and can’t provide for their children as well. In Conley’s book, the example of the black family couldn’t buy a house because their parents had too little money to loan them.

I think that from the beginning it was a race question, but now it’s more class. Of course they go hand in hand, but our classes are a product from earlier race inequalities. I’d like to believe that we live in a country oblivious to race, so that now poor people are considered lower class, not non-whites. But, as you can tell from the quote, white people are wealthier due to the racism of the 1900’s.

And I honestly don’t know how to fix it.

Link to a blog about how race and wealth are intertwined