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A Dissenting Voice
I want to ask you a question. Do you gravitate to news that agrees with your point of view, be it political or other? Do you want to hear the dissenting voice? How important, as a Ricochet paying customer, is it important to you? While Ricochet promotes itself as a conservative blog, we know that the many members that make up this site are from varying backgrounds, to say the least.
We have all faiths or no faith, we have different education levels, incomes levels, political views. This site is promoted as primarily politically-leaning, yet we enjoy poets, photographers, comedians, artists, doctors, lawyers, journalists, TV personalities, military, and so forth. What makes it such an interesting site is there is a community atmosphere, where all views are welcome. You get to know personalities, personal challenges. We even pray for each other – that’s right. There are groups within groups, on every interest you can imagine. It’s all monitored by a code of conduct – called respect. The sky is the limit with regards to topic and discussion, but there are no personal attacks allowed. People become friends, and support each other.
A case in point is the support of @TitusTechera and his summer in America, a citizen of Romania. His trip was funded by members who wanted Titus to come to America. We wanted to share with him who we are, and show how much we value him. What would Ricochet be without Titus? Another example is our @Claire. I fell in love with her books, her talent, her writing by accident. My sister found her book Menace in Europe, in a pile of used books in a thrift shop in Amish country, small-town America (sorry Claire). She saw the book, bought other things, went back to her car, got out of the car and went back in and bought the book. She could not forget the cover or the story. My sister read it in amazement and shipped it to me in FL. She said you have to read this book!!
Since then, I’ve read Claire’s books, passed them to others, just recently lent a couple her book on Menace, and have followed her ever since. Many at Ricochet got behind her and encouraged her to write a sequel. It’s going to be great. We “Go funded” her project without hesitation, as both investors and donators. We wanted to be a part of it, her experience as a journalist writing it. That is why I invested and I do not regret it. A Ricochet member flew to Paris @KateBraestrup and watched her cats while she was on assignment for the book. This is what Ricochet is about. It’s political, it’s fiery sometimes, and its personal. I love (literally) the people on this site. I have yet to go to a Ricochet meet up, but can’t wait.
This brings me to my topic. What is important to you as a reader, writer, commenter in the framework of a conservative, mainly political leaning blog? Do digressing voices have value? How much value? If you are a Christian, do you want to hear from an atheist? If you are leaning alt-right, do you value the left-leaning conservative opinion? If you love history, do you feel an obligation to share your knowledge? To teach new generations, new members of Ricochet?
I am disturbed by several things. I voted for Trump in the primary, but I wanted Ted Cruz. I rode the wave, because to me Hillary was worse. I don’t regret that. To date, I am 50/50 on Trump, but it is a new presidency and there has been a lot to deal with in the post-Obama election period. Our country has problems that need fixing. So do other countries, that have for the most part, relied on the US to fix them. I also am disturbed by the press, what makes up our American journalists. I would love to see Hannity on the Rachel Maddow show. I want to see ideas duked out, rather than protests in the street that yield nothing but burned out Starbucks. The Milo thing, for example. To expose his ideas in the light of day deserves a forum, what a great idea, yet many denied that. Why?
I want to know if Ricochet members want that forum, the dissenting voice, informative posts where you learn something that completely surprises you, good or bad, and you want more? Or do you want to hear from people like you, who agree with you? Are you quick to criticize a digressing view? I am. I want to criticize less and learn more. I want to learn period. I want to hear from everyone.
Freedom of Speech – we may not have it one day.
Published in General
I believe you’re incorrect in thinking there’s a general lack of interest in these leaders you’ve listed. I have met many black community members who respect these people–but as I’ve seen from this group already, not every Republican leader represents every conservative here. Likewise, not every Democrat leader represents every liberal I know. Everyone has slightly different to very different values, beliefs, strategy proposals that they believe will better help their constituents.
And yes, I believe most African Americans know that the two parties underwent a platform switch. As for who founded the KKK…do you have special insight? I believe many historians believe the KKK may have been founded by Confederate soldiers in the 1860s. It is also incorrect and misleading to say the Democrat “party” founded the KKK when it was never an official subdivision of either party.
Can you be more specific – give some examples?
Actually I would like to argue that we have made substantial improvements. I can’t speak for every area of challenge, but in terms of HIV/AIDS (my area of specialty), we have drastically increased people’s quality of life and life expectancy in less than 30 years, as well as decreasing new infections. A major part of that is due to substantial advocacy efforts from the LGBT community and allies, across all groups, including many minority groups that initially denied HIV/AIDS was a problem for their communities (and were wrong). A major success of HIV/AIDS work was effective and lower-risk medications (advocacy played a major part in that too). But also a continuum of continuously evaluated and improved public health programming: health education, programs to decrease stigma and increase awareness, condom distribution, increased screenings, the creation of a specialized work force to help people with HIV/AIDS get access to needed health care, the creation of specialized healthcare programs for HIV/AIDS patients, support for housing and mental health, etc.
That is Senator Tim Scott, not Congressman.
Fixed that for you. The Democrat party, prior to the civil war, chose to defend a system that treated people differently based on the color of their skin. The Republican party was born (from the ashes of the divided Whigs) to oppose that system. That dichotomy has remained true to this day. Democrats play up group identities and attempt to use those differences for political gain. Republicans try to reject group identities in spite of the abandonment of the corresponding political gains.
Look at the Republican administrations after the Civil War, and how government and the military was desegregated and minorities gained places in elected office. Look at how the 14th amendment was enacted — largely due to the need to extend the 2nd amendment to freed slaves so they could defend themselves from lynchings. (Talk about history that’s been swept under the rug by the Democrat’s media and educator enablers…)
Look at the Democrat administrations in the early 20th century, especially the re-segregation of government and the military under the “sainted” Woodrow Wilson. Look at the politicians known to have been members of the KKK and note which party they belonged to and who their allies were. Look at the eugenics movement of the early 20th century and its explicit goal of wiping out inferior races in America, especially black Americans. Try reading the early history of Margaret Sanger and her brainchild, Planned Parenthood, without being disgusted by the blatant and brutal and murderous racism of the left.
Go back to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and see the count of members of the two parties who voted for and against. It’s not what you seem to think. Go a little further back to the incarnations (plural) of the same legislation that were proposed during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations and filibustered by — wait for it — Democrats. The Civil Rights Act was the culmination of decades of Republican activism for equal treatment before the law. When the political tide started turning against Democrats’ Jim Crow laws, they turned the (justified) grievances into an entirely new political machine, appearing to switch sides. They haven’t. Government dependency fostered by extreme hand-outs, government policies that encourage and enable social disfunction, and non-stop political grievance mongering results in enslavement by just another name.
Martin Luther King dreamed of being judged by the content of his character instead of the color of his skin. Which party today actually promotes color-blind government policy? And promotes judges who still believe in the constitution and its amenments that are supposed to guaranteed that?
That’s a good specialty. George W. Bush gave more to AIDS research than any other president and agree that it has improved the lives of many. I was speaking about the inner cities (above) where things have not improved under minority and liberal leadership on specifically crime, hard drug use and trafficking, gangs, infrastructure deterioration, etc, but gotten worse.
Continuing from above – an example, I visited New Orleans prior to Katrina, a city and state under minority and liberal leadership for decades. They received enormous federal funds for years, for not only the pumping stations that were recognized as a possible failure problem in the event of a major hurricane, but for cleaning up their city. I never saw worse poverty in my life upon entering that city. I have been in the inner cities of Boston, Atlanta, Baltimore, New Jersey, but nothing compared to this. I was shocked. Mayor Nagin squandered funds and was arrested. Liberal governors failed to correct anything. We sat in a park mid-day in June while we watched a theft in broad daylight. I alerted a nearby cop who told me not to bother him – he was in the middle of an arrest. That’s one example of many and I don’t think things have improved. Lisa Ling did a special on CNN about the poverty, drugs, lack of opportunity in inner city Chicago. It was appalling and heartbreaking – again – liberal leadership failure. Can you make any sense of it? Mayor Emmanuel has failed that city.
I’m glad we’re in agreement that it’s a good specialty, because too often that’s another fight with conservatives (and some Lefts too). Anyway, I’ve been slow to respond to many things on this forum, and will never be able to get to everyone because of my limited amount of free time. But, this is an interesting research question (liberal leadership impacts on local crime, drug use, etc.) and will try to find some time to look into it, since it’s not my area of specialty per se (HIV/AIDS work also works to reduce substance abuse, since they’re co-occurring conditions). What I expect to find: support from primarily Dems leads to more funding for social service programs, such as mental health and substance use programs. These are long fights, though, since dosage is an issue. Addiction is not cured by a 12 week or even 12 month program. It’s a condition that requires a lifetime of maintenance and relapse is common. The goal is to find evidence of substantial community impact.
This is intellectual conjecture, but I think conservatives (on the whole) lean towards prevention rather than cure; progressives the other way. Conservatives favour ‘tough love’ programs; progressives more spending programs, which (unless run by total incompetents) cannot fail to have a beneficial effect on the targeted sub-section. And this is the heart of many social-policy debates, such as PreP on the NHS.
I was in church last week and a black man and his son came to sit in my pew. My first thought was ‘I should move up to create more space in the pew’ and my second thought was ‘if I do that, they’ll think I’m racist.’ And that’s what an Ivy League education did for me. Thanks, Yale.
My knowledge of progressives makes me think that ‘woman of color doing HIV research’ is their idea of a jackpot, but that may be unnecessarily cynical.
To return to the original point: Dan Hannan recently wrote an (unreasonably cheerful) article about being a conservative in a liberal world. That’s why I value Ricochet. I have to tiptoe through conversations with my friends, because I know they’re getting the NYT/Guardian/Facebook-share perspective. I try to avoid the rightist sugar-rush from eg American Thinker. I don’t want to argue with progressives here, I want to toss ideas round and know I’m not alone; not to construct groupthink, but to work through some friendly yet also critical opinions.