America, the Beautiful

[4est_4est_Gump]

With so much negativity, I thought maybe a little Ben Stein in the nativity...

...

Many years ago, I said to my Dad, “Pop, it occurs to me that we Jews live better in America than Jews ever have anywhere and at any time in history.”

My Pop, a genuinely wise man, said, “Benjy, that’s the whole point of America. Jews, Irish, Blacks, Polish, Italians, Asians… we all live better here than anywhere else in the history of mankind. That’s the story of America.”

How right he was. I awaken every morning and think of all the bills I have to pay and all of the years I have crossed off the calendar, and I hear my wife’s cough, and I feel terrified. And then I think that I live in America, where everything is possible. I do not have the Cossacks coming to beat me to death for being a Jew. I don’t have the Gestapo rounding me up for being a Jew. I am not being hunted and chased down by anyone but myself.

And this is what occurs to me about race and oppression in America. Yes, we have severe problems. Yes, sometimes the problems are with the police — but very, very rarely. Our society is in fact so much better, more forgiving, more loving than any other large nation has ever been that it is not even close.

Yes, we have had problems with racism, and when I was a child, I was called a “kike” a few too many times for comfort. Yes, my family could not live where we wanted to love because of legal discrimination in housing.

Yes, horrible repression of blacks was a commonplace for far too long. Blacks have reason to be angry if they consider the past and even the present.

But the progress that has been made, just in my lifetime, has been breathtaking, for blacks, for Jews, for women, for everyone. Just in the last fifty years, the progress towards equality of opportunity has been glorious, has been magical. Let’s remember that.

Let us spend this season of the Prince of Peace not complaining, but exalting in the miles we have traveled towards human dignity. We are not considered the light of the world for nothing. And, as a Jew, whose people were horribly persecuted for millennia, as I look at my sleeping dogs and my tranquil lawn at this joyful season, I marvel at just how blessed my family and I are.

From: Some Gratitude, Anyone? Anyone?

http://spectator.org/articles/61194/some-gratitude-anyone-anyone

 

[PayDay]

This was nice. Thanks for the

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

This was nice. Thanks for the

 

[doowdniw]

A refreshing perspective. How dare he?!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

As an amateur historian since 1960 or so what I learned is things and people are rarely how theyre portrayed or remembered. As a professional socio-biologist for 30 years I know memories don't exist and, much worse, every brain is unique and common experience is nonsense. Our experiences of the same events are as diverse as our acrobatic or culinary skills, that is....normally distributed.

WPA historians believed old slaves were senile when they reported fond memories of slave times. No one believed it in the 30s, and no one believes it today. Those times were horrible and demeaning. Yet the records don't support the conventional wisdom. No one abused or neglected their slaves any more than they abused or neglected their mules. Slaves had cradle to grave care and security. In fact, there are plenty of documented evidence that affluent slaves bought and sold wives then sold their children. Females were brood sows.

The real horrors of slavery occurred after Emancipation when freedmen were on their own and at the mercies of the world.

 

[Saint Peter]

Keep those fond memories safe.


The tide is changing.

We are fucked.