Zombie

Is puzzled - what set of facts could make you do a 180 on your conviction principle?

Here's how it worked Member A - Opening Post asking a question or giving a point of view Often this was to get views and maybe increase knowledge and understanding. Or it might be intentionally inflammatory Now and again it was deliberately calculated to stamp on as many buttons as the member was able to What happened next usually followed a predictable pattern.... Member B - replies with something adjacent to the OP Member C - challenges something in Member B's post Member B - objects to Member C's challenge Member D - butts in with fresh allegations completely irrelevant to the OP or previous posts ...then all Hell lets loose The big difference in Soapbox was that threads had a very long life. Even when you thought they were completely and absolutely stone cold dead, they could suddenly spring back to life with fresh fighting debating. Contrast with the blogs which just fade away and die and are soon forgotten True. But if you admire them as people then, as someone else said in a related thread, you have to admire their "sins" as well. And politicians are full of "sin". I may admire certain actions of politicians but I can't think of a single prominent politician I wholly admire as a person. Even Churchill was deeply flawed - he just happened to be right on the one thing that mattered at the time. As for Lincoln he was a lawyer - I could leave it at that So he was highly skilled at manipulating language. We don't know a lot about him as a person, pretty much all there is are records of his actions, his correspondence and his speeches. It's entirely legitimate to call him out on his words "...government of the people, by the people, for the people..." because, though they may well be noble words that we all endorse, in Mr Lincoln's GA it was cant. Politicians do it all the time. Because Mr Lincoln's agenda was keeping the union. At all costs - including the continuance of slavery. Which would have to mean blacks excluded altogether from those fine words "...government of the people, by the people, for the people..." If you still don't believe Mr Lincoln's use of the word "people" excluded black slaves in the GA, he had made this very clear the previous year in his letter to the editor, New York Tribune 22 Aug 1862 My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. Being a lawyer, Mr Lincoln would have known full well he was being dishonest with these fine words. But he wasn't just being dishonest about "people". The USA believes in democracy and in the right to self-determination. But, as H L Menken noted, "The Union... fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves." Now consider this. The UK is also a union. Part of it tried to break away last year. No-one fought each other. No-one was killed. A legal process was put in place for a referendum. As it happens... nothing happened. Seems to me the UK exemplifies American values more than Mr Lincoln did. 'lead, follow, or get out of the way' is the cause of much grief throughout history. It's toxic and potentially lethal. Examples include potential homicide as demonstrated in the Milgram Experiment, in various air accident reports where co-pilots "followed" the Captain's decisions and failed to challenge, and "group think" by boards and management teams such as NASA which contributed to the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. And just look at the so-called Islamic State which is thriving on having strong leaders, indoctrinating and radicalizing "followers" and everyone else is "got out of the way" - generally with a bullet. A healthy modern democracy, society and business can only flourish if there are also people prepared to challenge, to call out politicians and overbearing leaders. I wasn't acting "as if Europe is any better at race/ethnic relations than the US" because, first of all, Europe is not one country just as the US is not one state and so I have no influence over or responsibility for what happens in other European countries. And second, my contribution was not about "who's better / worse" - what I did do was call out some hollow words of a long dead politician as cant. It's the duty of citizens in any democracy to challenge - as explained in my response to Carlos. Likewise the ethnic mix of London "compared to New York or Philadelphia" is not relevant - it's not a competition, and the migration history of London is entirely different from US cities for good reasons to do with a 2000 year history and geographic location, so to accuse London of being "whitewashed" is inappropriate and erroneous.. Likewise the generalized swipes "You treat Arabs far worse in Europe than Americans treat blacks" and "Europeans are often far more blatant about their racism then most Americans".

Happy Independence Day to all our cousins across the pond

Some merit in your comments about the C of E, but I'd just point out first that the House of Lords bishops - the "Lords Spiritual" - are not part of government so the constitutional significance is immaterial, and second this aspect of "institutional racism" is a sideshow compared to the deliberate continuing disenfranchisement of black Americans 100 years and more after Mr Lincoln's fine sounding words

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The "sound bite" comment was perhaps, what we call in UK, "tongue in cheek" But Lincoln was nothing if not a very astute politician and he was very skilled at polishing his speeches for maximum impact on his audiences. He knew full well that his important speeches would be widely reported and would thus become a permanent printed record. My issue with politicians - and that's what Lincoln was - is they always have an agenda that rarely coincides with the speeches they make. Worse, their speeches rarely reflect the actual facts and realities at the time those speeches are made. And despite the reverence shown by many Americans to Lincoln in general and to this speech in particular, the same holds true of the GA. It's worth remembering that another great American, Martin Luther King, made particular reference to the shameful fact that universal sufferage still did not apply to all American "blacks" when he made his I Have A Dream speech in 1963 - 100 years later! (from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial)

I'm very sorry for your loss, addy. When my father died, I wasn't very close to him. I didn't know what to say or what to feel. I disagreed with so much about him, the way he did things, the way he was. Since then I've thought about him a lot and I've come to understand him so much better. It just makes me sad that I didn't have that understanding while he was still alive. I still miss him. We all experience grief in our own unique way. All I can say is my thoughts are with you

Happy Canada Day from across the pond

Fine words. Trouble is his "new birth of freedom" didn't apply to "blacks" and Native Americans. So either they weren't "people" to Mr Lincoln, or he was more interested in making the historical sound bite https://www.aclu.org/files/VRATimeline.html?redirect=timeline-history-voting-rights-act

that sounds like a result to me

growing up, my family had a pet sausage dog. A greedy sausage dog - ate anything. Some friends of my mum's were staying, with a toddler being potty trained (you can see where this is going... ). The toddler was basically a biological system of leaking orifices. The friend thanked my mum for having emptied a particularly unpleasant pot load. She explained she hadn't. Then they noticed the sausage dog licking its lips...

good to see LBO had such a happy day on her birthday *so sorry this is a day late - only had an iPad yesterday and no good for posting pics *

commiserations, Wildone does it it make me a bad person if I admit I slept through it?

Obamacare could be rolled back, same sex marriage can't. It's a one-way trip All those nice folks who comprise such a big chunk of American society will be screaming and cussing and plotting, and they will surely try every legal trick in the book but ultimately the only thing their efforts will do is fatten the bank accounts of charlatan lawyers who if they were honest / didn't share the same pitiful and bigoted outlook on life would just tell their clients it's a busted flush

excellent news It makes no sense that valid marriage in a country or state is not legally recognized across the entirety of that nation. That's the current position in the UK (Northern Ireland does not currently recognize legal valid marriages made in other parts of the UK) but hopefully the decision to allow gay marriage in Ireland - the population recently voted for it in a referendum - will bring the UK into line with the US

is embarrassed - didn't even know England were still in it oh the shame, the shame hangs head in shame...

the original The Avengers star, Patrick Macnee, is no more He's best known for playing the archetypal Englishman John Steed in the British TV "spy-fi" show that ran from 1961. I love old 60s TV shows and this is one of my faves

sooo, who's the grossest of them all?

how did we get from squeezing zits to swapping recipes?

Thanks for posting Krista. The 100% male posts in this thread - until yours - was kinda proving the point in itself

I once ate a pig's nipple. It was in a snack bag of pork scratchings. It had hairs on it ...or was it a wart?

England, and later Britain, profited from the Atlantic triangular slave trade for 200 odd years from the early 17th century until abolition in 1807 (slavery was not fully abolished within the British Empire until 1833 - some exceptions remained until 1843). This trade is recognized for the evil it was.That's the point. England / Britain's role is made very clear through education, at public memorials, in the media and at locations where the trade was centred such as London, Liverpool and Bristol. There is a lot of interest across the country in understanding what happened, the history and Britain's involvement. The Confederate flag issue suggests this is not the case in the Southern States.

Flags are powerful things. They have meaning, they represent ideas and values. The Confederate flags were intended to be the embodiment of collective beliefs that were horrifically cruel beyond our imaginings. They don't represent fluffy bunnies they represent a belief system based on the exploitation of black slaves as "property" - property "owned" by whites. Those who raised the Confederate flags 150 years ago were proclaiming "This is what we believe in, this is what we are fighting for." Makes you wonder what those who raise the Confederate flag today believe in and are fighting for...

I used to bite my toenails ...can't reach 'em now

That is sad news, addy. I do hope your relative is comfortable and getting the best care