“dumb single-issue voter LGBTs ill be more prone to ignoring Obama’s attack on…”
This single issue means my children can’t inherit my property, my partner can’t receive the retirement package I earned and our family lacks some 1300 other legal rights and benefits. Marriage equality is crucial to my family

If you want my vote on other issues that are important to you, then get out there and work for gay rights. Democrats should have fixed this problem back before Bill Clinton screwed us over. Now 40% of North Carolina’s Democrats voted to enshrine discrimination in their constitution.

And you think we’re dumb if we vote for the first sitting president in history who has had the fortitude to take a position that supports gay marriage? Give me another candidate who can beat Obama and Romney and I’ll vote for them. In the meantime, Obama just earned more than my vote. He’s now earned my respect.

…they’re literally breaking up families to fulfill a budgetary authority.

The government isn’t breaking up families. The people who enter or stay in this country illegally are responsible for what they’ve done to their own family. Jeez. Hey, let’s stop convicting criminals because it might mean they can’t hang out with their families anymore.

A few people asked me why the Obama Administration is so dead-set on deporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants, when they have no hope of attracting the anti-immigrant crowd from a political standpoint.

Maybe the government is deporting people because that’s their job. Maybe they’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do, even if it doesn’t win them any votes.

Has it occurred to you that promoting illegal aliens over legal immigrants is unfair to those who abide by the rules and wait their turn to immigrate?

The problem, as evidenced in recall attempts in Wisconsin, is more complicated than just “unions=good, wingers/tea-partiers=stupid.” The reason moderate Democrats and independents aren’t up in arms over the government’s union busting tactics is because the public is angry at PUBLIC EMPLOYEES continuing to benefit from theft by taxes with union negotiated agreements that protect government employees even when the rest of us are taking a beating with cutbacks, job losses and/or underemployment. People who are struggling look around and see others who still have great jobs, thanks to unfair over-taxation. Property values are plummeting, yet the government employees that assesses your house still makes the same salary, while refusing to reduce your real estate tax burden. State employees still have great jobs with great benefits, while the rest of us have to support those jobs with our income tax. In Wisconsin, the issue was pegged as an “us vs. them” taxpayers against those gov’ment employees who don’t have to experience the pain the rest of us are going through. (In reality, many have shared the pain with non-government workers, but your taxes still haven’t gone down, have they?)

Yes, many right wingers are easily misled into voting against their interests. But wouldn’t that characterization precisely describe the left’s inane support of our stealth Republican president? We gave Obama a huge mandate with majorities in both the US House and Senate, but now with our Democrats’ ongoing damage to the economy, we apparently voted against the interests of ourselves, our children, our grandchildren and who knows how many more generations that will now have to struggle to extricate themselves from this economic morass we’ve been led into. Why aren’t Democrats up in arms?

Historical humility and shame?

… for the sake of the legitimacy of our fight against terrorists–and for the sake of some historical humility and shame–don’t you think it’s time we stop analogizing al Qaeda to tribes that were defending their homeland against our imperialism?

Who exactly is the “we” who should be ashamed of themselves over events that occurred hundreds of years ago? Aside from the silly analogy between al Qaeda and Seminoles, there is the deeper issue of perpetual guilt trips over historical events. How can we ever deal with contemporary racism and “tribalism” in its many current variations when we’re still obsessed over cowboys and Indians (or in this case, Spaniards and native Americans)?

So who is this nebulous “we” who should feel shame, and why should we be embarrassed. Like the silly concept of national retribution for blacks because of slavery, it’s useless to continue berating white skinned people for what other people did hundreds of years ago who happen to have the same skin color as today’s Caucasian Americans. I have ancestors who fought for the North in the civil war. Should I be required to pay tax money to “African Americans” to appease the guilt I’m supposed to feel? Should dark skinned Americans from the Caribbean receive those retribution payments as well? What about contemporary Africans who immigrate to the US? Should they get retribution for having the same skin color and nation origins of slaves that were brought here hundreds of years ago? I have black people in my family, and white people. Should the white siblings pay retribution to the black members of our family?

What about the native Americans who fought tribal wars and/or raped, maimed, tortured and murdered other native Americans for thousands of years before Europeans came to this continent? Should contemporary native Americans pay other native Americans for the actions of their warlike ancestors? Oh, wait, they wiped out entire tribes so there’s no one left to pay retribution to. What about the Caucasians who were wiped out by dark skinned migrants who came from the south up through North America more than 10,000 years ago? (See Kenewick man.)

My point is that anytime the issue of native Americans come up, there’s an automatic, knee-jerk response from liberals that implies whites are bad, and people of color always got screwed. Yet even this article admits that it was the Spaniards who were at fault at that time. So why then do descendents of those Spanish explorers now get to claim they were oppressed by the big bad white people (eg: Mexican Hispanics demanding amnesty for illegal aliens)?

White guilt. What a silly, useless idea. People have hurt other people ever since we could make rock knives & spears. People will always take advantage of and hurt other people, especially those in groups that look or act different from their own group (tribalism). It’s human nature. If we want to move forward into a world where we can prevent that kind of thing from happening, the best way is to stop pretending it’s as simple as “white people are bad, dark skinned people get picked on.” Historically, the amount of violence within races is much, much greater than that between races. In sheer numbers, conflict throughout history has been more about power and resources than about racial differences.

We need to recognize that every group can and/ or has hurt other groups, and the way to prevent that is to halt contemporary racism and tribalism, not to fall into silly white guilt.