Do we have the right to tax people in order to help the poor?

[Ned]

400 years will do, as far as the US is concerned - and I want the "we all" that came from Africa sorted by voluntary and involuntary immigrants. It's not an event I'm talking about; it's a history that has not yet ended.

My blame game. Cute, but crap.

That's convenient. What if I want to go back 1000 years? I had a great great great great grandfather who got screwed over by a dishonest Arab and I want justice.

Just because your great grandfather robbed my great grandfather blind, it does not mean that you have a moral right to keep the loot.

It may not be practical to sort out the mess but, at least, you should be aware of where your wealth came from.

[Wyman]

What if I want to go back 1000 years?

Now that's convenient. If you live in the United States, your economy is built on slavery. Your political system is structured on the very same privilege and the very same systemic discrimination, in voting, in housing, in employment, in education and in law and its enforcement. It's not going away, just because you falsify it, deny it, or trivialize it.

I had a great great great great grandfather who got screwed over by a dishonest Arab and I want justice.

Be careful what you ask for! Most of the people I'm talking about can prove their case.
(Besides, haven't you guys brutalized enough Arabs to go 'round?)

Prove what case?

[Wyman]

400 years will do, as far as the US is concerned - and I want the "we all" that came from Africa sorted by voluntary and involuntary immigrants. It's not an event I'm talking about; it's a history that has not yet ended.

My blame game. Cute, but crap.

That's convenient. What if I want to go back 1000 years? I had a great great great great grandfather who got screwed over by a dishonest Arab and I want justice.

Just because your great grandfather robbed my great grandfather blind, it does not mean that you have a moral right to keep the loot.

It may not be practical to sort out the mess but, at least, you should be aware of where your wealth came from.

It comes from my employer, in the form of a paycheck. And who is talking of moral rights? You should know by now that people like me don't believe in moral rights. Rights are created by the government, for better and for worse. So, there is a legal right to keep the loot, although I'm not aware of any slaveholders or robbers in my ancestry - but who knows?

[Obvious Leo]

The most direct way to enact change is to cut access to the teat.

Tell it to the Cambodian peasant farmer who slaves 14 hours a day in the broiling sun for two bucks in a country whose economy was destroyed because of regional intervention by foreign powers. There are precious few teats to suck on in the rice paddy. I have a vast suite of similar examples but doubtless none will influence your hubristic sense of entitlement. Whoever did all the hard work to allow you to live in your comfortable style it most certainly wasn't YOU, so you tell me who the fuck is on the teat?

[Ned]

You should know by now that people like me don't believe in moral rights.

It was legal in Nazi Germany to arrest Jews and confiscate their property.

It was legal during WW2 to do the same to Japanese Americans.

It was legal during American expansion to the west to drive the Indians off their lands and kill them by the thousands.

As long as something is legal, we don't have to worry about moral rights and ethical considerations.

Very convenient.

[Obvious Leo]

Now that's convenient. If you live in the United States, your economy is built on slavery. Your political system is structured on the very same privilege and the very same systemic discrimination, in voting, in housing, in employment, in education and in law and its enforcement. It's not going away, just because you falsify it, deny it, or trivialize it.

Skip. This problem is not restricted to the U.S., although it is far more apparent there. The vast majority of Americans truly have no idea what's going on in the rest of the world. Very few of them have passports and travel abroad and almost their entire media consumption is targeted at a domestic market. The content of this media serves a particular agenda of bringing about the sort of society which third world countries are desperately trying to get out of, the world of slum-dwellers and maharajahs. There is both tragedy and irony in this because there once was a time when these struggling nations could look upon the U.S. as a model of what could be aspired to. Now all they see is a nation hastening towards its own Armageddon and doing its best to take the rest of the world down with it. The U.S. has forsaken its international capital.

I say this as a person who still finds much to admire about the U.S. I love the people, the language and even many of its quaint cultural curiosities. I love its history, the honourable moral stand it took in the past when injustice was being perpetrated in other parts of the world, and I love the generosity of spirit it showed in times past by sharing its good fortune with nations far less fortunate. What happened to this America? It was stolen by banks and corporate gangsters with the connivance of a corrupt legislature and transformed into a grotesque facsimile of its former self. The America of today has frittered away its moral and material wealth for the aggrandisement of the few who can greedily claw their way through the mire, and all for what?

"The living are few but the dead are many"....Frank Hardy

[Skip]

Prove what case?

The charge you made against a 1000-year-ago Arab is bogus. The crimes I mentioned are a matter of record. If both came to justice, you could lose.

[Wyman]

The most direct way to enact change is to cut access to the teat.

Tell it to the Cambodian peasant farmer who slaves 14 hours a day in the broiling sun for two bucks in a country whose economy was destroyed because of regional intervention by foreign powers. There are precious few teats to suck on in the rice paddy. I have a vast suite of similar examples but doubtless none will influence your hubristic sense of entitlement. Whoever did all the hard work to allow you to live in your comfortable style it most certainly wasn't YOU, so you tell me who the fuck is on the teat?

a country whose economy was destroyed because of regional intervention by foreign powers.

Pol Pot didn't help much either.

[Wyman]

Prove what case?

The charge you made against a 1000-year-ago Arab is bogus. The crimes I mentioned are a matter of record. If both came to justice, you could lose.

So who should be punished - the perpetrators, their kin, those of their race? I thought punishing people for the sins of their ancestors went out of style well over 500 years ago. And collectivism in the form of punishing groups of people for their membership in a particular group went out with Hitler and Stalin.

[Wyman]

You should know by now that people like me don't believe in moral rights.

It was legal in Nazi Germany to arrest Jews and confiscate their property.

It was legal during WW2 to do the same to Japanese Americans.

It was legal during American expansion to the west to drive the Indians off their lands and kill them by the thousands.

As long as something is legal, we don't have to worry about moral rights and ethical considerations.

Very convenient.

I'm against all those things for reasons other than natural rights.

[henry quirk]

"Systemic privilege perpetuates itself, its inequities and its instability."

So what? Life ain't fair. Go into any hospital nursery: you got little Johnny (beautiful, healthy, smart) and litte Joey (ugly, sick, stupid). From the start there's no fairness. You want a 'Harrison Bergeron' world where the advantaged are brought low.

Good luck with that.

As someone who came into the world without advantage, who has worked hard for what little I have, I'm not inclined to share with folks who refuse to work (at all).

Fuck those people.

[henry quirk]

"...your hubristic sense of entitlement. Whoever did all the hard work to allow you to live in your comfortable style it most certainly wasn't YOU, so you tell me who the fuck is on the teat?"

HA!

[Skip]

So who should be punished - the perpetrators, their kin, those of their race?

Nobody needs to be punished. Punishing has been the bane of civilization. Punishing the poor for being poor, and then punishing them more for resenting it, and then punishing them more for resisting the punishments, and so forth, is the cycle that usually ends in bloody revolutions, after which the winners set about punishing whoever they're angry with, and thus destroying even more of their society.

What you need to do is far more difficult. You need to look at the situation as it is at this moment in time, figure out what infrastructure needs to be repaired, what agencies need to be empowered, what political, judiciary and economic establishments need to be reformed, what mechanisms aren't performing their functions and dismantle those, what needs building, who needs healing, what power and privilege needs curtailing, what waste of resources need plugging, what corruption needs excising.

Figure out what it needs to fix your society, and do that. Even if it means not hurting anybody.

[Ned]

So who should be punished - the perpetrators, their kin, those of their race?

Nobody needs to be punished. Punishing has been the bane of civilization. Punishing the poor for being poor, and then punishing them more for resenting it, and then punishing them more for resisting the punishments, and so forth, is the cycle that usually ends in bloody revolutions, after which the winners set about punishing whoever they're angry with, and thus destroying even more of their society.

Maybe we need to examine Desmond Tutu's ideas, encompassed in the charter of the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission"?

[Wyman]

So who should be punished - the perpetrators, their kin, those of their race?

Nobody needs to be punished. Punishing has been the bane of civilization. Punishing the poor for being poor, and then punishing them more for resenting it, and then punishing them more for resisting the punishments, and so forth, is the cycle that usually ends in bloody revolutions, after which the winners set about punishing whoever they're angry with, and thus destroying even more of their society.

What you need to do is far more difficult. You need to look at the situation as it is at this moment in time, figure out what infrastructure needs to be repaired, what agencies need to be empowered, what political, judiciary and economic establishments need to be reformed, what mechanisms aren't performing their functions and dismantle those, what needs building, who needs healing, what power and privilege needs curtailing, what waste of resources need plugging, what corruption needs excising.

Figure out what it needs to fix your society, and do that. Even if it means not hurting anybody.

You and Ned are the ones who brought up historic wrongs - why bring it up if not to punish someone? Even if the word you use is not 'punish?'