Quote from traderNik:
I also made my peace with hapaboy, whose views about appropriate punishment for drug dealers are anathema to me. I had a pleasant enough exchange with Pabst regarding Ann Coulter's latest pot-sweetener. I welcome the opposing views of others and I, unlike some here (Ztroll!!), am constantly questioning my own belief systems and assumptions. At the very least I realize that I am capable of falling into traps in thinking caused by my presumptions.
I can see the other side of many arguments that are distasteful to those on the left. I am, like you RM, into a doctine of personal responsibility, and this means I have very little tolerance for arguments which attempt to shift the blame for individual wrongdoing onto 'culture' or society' or whatever. I hold black people responsible for their collective socio-economic status. I can 'see' a lot of the arguments made by the right regarding blacks in prison, gun laws that allow self-protection, and even the temporary abrogation of civil liberties brought about by membership in certain identifiable groups (like the Crips or the Bloods, for instance).
Bu this bit about '40% of black people are pricks'?
How is there a 'side' of that to be seen?? That's not an argument. If someone makes a counter argument to my own, I can try to 'see the other side'. But this isn't an 'argument' or a 'position'. It's a piece of garbage.
Anyway... didn't I say I was out?
EDIT: jz, I will call these parents racists every time. That's what they are and that's why their children will probably be doomed to mediocrity.