Sunday, March 31, 2013

About Gay Marriage

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
About Gay Marriage
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I recognize that everyone who is against gay marriage is not a bigot. There's much more to being a bigot than merely one's opinion. Bigots are also mean-spirited, and they generally know that their attitudes are unjust. That's why they maintain them - to express their hatred.
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But one doesn't have to be bigoted to hold bigoted beliefs. Some people are raised to hold certain attitudes, and while the person him or herself is not a bigot, they hold discriminatory beliefs, and those beliefs have the very same kind of negative impact on society as a mouth-foaming, sheet-wearing bigot.
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That's what happened during slavery. All White people didn't hate Black people, but the impact of their unexamined ideas had the very same negative consequences as those of bigots. That's also what happened in Nazi Germany, and what led to the near extinction of Native Americans here in this country. In those instances, many of those people weren't bigots, but they allowed themselves to hold on to attitudes that allowed the true bigots to thrive.
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In the case of Black people, it's important for us to understand that we're either against discrimination or we’re not; we must either be for ALL the people in our society to be treated equally, or we're not - there's no in-between. And the argument that, "If we allow same-sex marriage, we also have to allow a man to marry his dog, or his sister," is invalid, because we don't allow ANYONE to marry their dog or sister. So everyone is being treated equally in that regard.
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So what Black people should always remember is, we're products of the very same bigoted environment as White people. So we're capable of being just as bigoted as any racist Hillbilly. Look at any hip hop video and count the number of dark-skin sisters in them - very few. And when was the last time you heard of a person committing a drive-by wearing a sheet? Again, very rarely, if ever. The reason for that is our own bigoted attitudes towards one another has rendered the Klan redundant.
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That's why when I became a thinking adult I decided to reassessed ALL of my attitudes and beliefs, and anything that didn't stand up to reason, I unceremoniously discarded - and that included religion. I replaced religion with ethics, because I realized that the only reason I held the religious beliefs that I did was due to an accident of birth.
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With just a little bit of God-given logic, it became clear to me that if I had been born in Israel I would have believed something altogether different, and if I'd been born in Iraq, I would have believed something different still. That fact alone made it abundantly clear that my religious beliefs were forged by man, not God.
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It became clear to me that the only way that I could truly know God's will was by observing what God has done - and he made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think. So if I allowed myself to be more loyal to what man has WRITTEN than what God has done, my faith is not in God, but in man. In fact, that's what faith means - that you've decided to embrace what you've been told.
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But just because you've decided to embraced a given philosophy as your religious beliefs does not mean that you have the right to shove those beliefs down everyone else's throats, and that's exactly what many people in this country are trying to do. That's stupid, and it's exactly why the founding fathers chose to separate church and state - to protect us from our stupidity.
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Are We Lying On God To Justify Our Own Bigotry - Again?

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Are We Lying On God To Justify Our Own Bigotry - Again?

I just reread an editorial entitled "Don't Shake Your Fist at God."  It was written by a friend mine. In the editorial he comes out against same-sex marriage based on the Bible, and his view that it is not a civil rights issue. He refers to gays as "reprobates" and implies that by allowing same-sex marriage our society is on the threshold of becoming a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah.
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My friend is a very gifted writer, but I found his position on this particular issue to be absolutely ridiculous. While I'm as straight as they come, and it's beyond my comprehension why with all the beautiful women in this world one man would want to marry another, it is just as incomprehensible to me why one group of people would insist on shoving their belief system down everyone else's throat.
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It simply eludes me why a person who's against same-sex marriage can't be satisfied with simply taking the position that since I'm totally against same-sex marriage, I'm going to make it a point to marry someone of the opposite sex, then just leave it at that. But that's not good enough for some people. Some people aren't satisfied unless they can make their opinion THE LAW. There's simply got to be some kind of pathology attendant to that kind of obsession.
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I was raise by devout Christians, and most of my values are consistent with the values reflected in the Bible, but I didn't get any of them by reading the Bible. All of my values evolved around the principle of minding my own business and treating people the way I want to be treated–and I didn't get that from the Bible either; I got it through what God gave us to live by long before there was any such thing as a Bible–it's called, common sense.
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For that reason, even though my values are consistent with those of the Christian tradition, I have refused to formalize my association with the Christian community, because I've known too many Christians over the years who are more interested in looking down on other people than looking up to God. Too many tend to be narrow-minded and discriminatory in mind-set. They also tend to be more interested in preaching a sermon, than living one.
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This world would be a much less hostile place if we would simply live, and let live, as long as individuals are not hurting others. I don't see what's so difficult about that concept. But even if we did decide to abolish certain behaviors, I'd go after the bigots long before I went after the gays. After all, Rush Limbaugh is having a much more negative impact on society than Little Richard.
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I've pointed out several times in my columns that true Christians are some of the most loving and beneficent people in the world, but unfortunately, there are far too many demagogues hiding among their number. Some of the most vicious bigots in the world find the Christian community a very convenient place to hide and spread their hatred and bigotry. By feigning to be Christians, these demagogues are allowed to say, "It's not that I hate everybody who don't look, think, and act like me, it's just that God does." That allows them to promote the demonization and slaughter of anyone who is different from themselves, while at the same time wrapping themselves in the alleged "word of God" - ask Sitting Bull.
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That creates a serious problem within the Christian community, because much too often these bigots are in positions of authority, and since many Christians believe that these authoritarian bigots have a direct pipeline to God, their poisonous bigotry tends to seep into the thinking of legitimate Christians.
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We've seen the demonic impact of these people throughout history. We saw them during the Inquisition when they burned so-called "witches" alive, and they raised their ugly heads again with the brutality of slavery, and yet again during the so-called "Manifest Destiny," where they justified the slaughter of nearly all the Native Americans across this land. Now we see them, once again, spreading their malevolence in the middle-east, while at the same time disseminating their poison here at home.
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So I want to take this opportunity to point out to my well-meaning, but grossly misguided colleague, that whenever one group in our society attempts to demonize another, that's not God's will - that's the will of bigots, and it is, indeed, a civil rights issue.
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When I was a kid, about five years old, I had a friend who was quite effeminate. It was clear that he was "different" long before we even knew his sexual orientation. It was obvious that the adults already knew he was gay - even though he didn't even know what the word meant at the time - because they use to whisper and giggle whenever he'd come around. But of all my friends, even then, he was the smartest and the most loyal.
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Later in life, it turned out that he indeed was gay, but there is no one on the face of this Earth that can tell me that he had a choice in the matter, anymore than I had a choice in growing up to love women, because he was effeminate before he was old enough to make a choice, or even know their was a choice to be made. Therefore, if God made him gay, who are we to discriminate against an act of God?
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With respect to the Bible, many Christians tend to be quite hypocritical in picking and choosing what scriptures they choose to adhere to. While those who are against gay marriage often select scriptures that tend to justify their bigotry, there is another scripture - one that seems to me to be much more reflective of what Christianity is suppose to be about. It says, "Judge ye not."
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What makes that scripture so important is that it seems to be a warning from God. It tells man to stay out of God's business, because man is much too narrow-minded and stupid to understand why God chose to do what he has done.
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It is also important for Black "Christians" to remember that the people who taught us the attitudes and religious beliefs that many Black people so passionately embrace had us tied next to the mules when they taught it to us. They were killing and abusing us even as they taught us to "Love thy neighbor," and it seems that many of us have learned their lesson well - that God wants us to love our neighbors, except for the ones the bigots taught us to hate.
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We should also remember that at the time that Barack Obama was born, there were many states in this union where it was illegal for his mother and father to marry. There were many people who thought that reflected God's will as well - and many still do.

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

The Real History of The Poverty Tours

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
The Real History of The Poverty Tours
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The hostility that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West have for President Obama is so transparent that if it were glass we would have walked right through it and cut ourselves to shreds. These two are shameless, and it’s not only a national disgrace how the establishment media is allowing them to prance around posing as the savior of the poor and middle class, but they're actually helping them to perpetuate this fraud by providing them constant coverage and millions of dollars worth of publicly supported air time.
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These two thought that they were gonna become the Grand Dragons of the Black Community - which is a very profitable gig when you’re in the business of selling ALEC-connected corporations access to the Black community like Tavis Smiley. Tavis is the biggest corporate shill in the Black community. He fronts for Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, Exxon/Mobile, Allstate Ins., Nationwide Ins., etc. - a veritable who’s who of the corporations that are most responsible for victimizing the poor and middle class in the country, and who are spending millions of dollars to obstruct minority voter rights. That’s what makes it so ironic that they’re trying to portray themselves as the saviors of "the poor minorities."
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During Obama’s first campaign for president Smiley and West had already hitched their wagons to Hillary Clinton. She was 37 points ahead of Obama in the Black community at the time, so they were all set to gain the clout, prestige, and riches of having presidential access and being acknowledged as the new grand viziers of the Black community. But then, Obama won the election - in spite of their most ardent efforts - and caught them by surprise. In fact, Cornel West tried to jump the fence and began campaigning for Obama when it became clear that Obama might actually win, but Obama wasn’t having it. That's what caused the controversy over West not being invited to the inaugural celebration.
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At the time, West tried to frame the issue like Obama was an ingrate for not inviting him to the inauguration after he campaigned for him. But he failed to mention the fact that less than an hour after Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States West went on national television and told the Black community that Obama couldn’t be trusted.
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That’s right - on the very day that Obama went to Springfield, Illinois to maximize the historic significance of announcing his candidacy for president in the shadow of Lincoln's former statehouse instead of coming on Tavis' "State of the Black Union" jibfest, West stood up and did an impassioned rant indicating that Obama couldn’t be trusted to be president because he didn’t come on the Tavis Smiley show, as though Tavis was the gatekeeper of the Black community - and all the while Tavis is standing there grinnin' like a chess cat as though they'd caught Obama committing some sort of unconscionable act.
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Look at the video below and notice how entitled West sounds, as though it was more appropriate for Obama to come kiss Tavis’ ring than to announce his candidacy in the shadow of Lincoln’s former statehouse. I remember becoming slack-jawed at his unmitigated arrogance. Up until that moment I had been a big fan of both Tavis and West, but that was when I first realized that they were egomaniacal fools. That was also the morning that I started investigating them, and I’ve written nearly 30 articles on them since.
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The video is also ironically prophetic. Notice how even as West is lecturing the nation on how Obama is surrounding himself with people who can’t be trusted, you can see Wells Fargo and Exxon/Mobil logos floating by in the background behind him. What makes that so prophetically ironic is Tavis was later involved in the Wells Fargo "Ghetto Loans" scam, where Wells Fargo ended up having to settled a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice agreeing to pay poor and middle-class minorities $175 million as a result of the scam. This is the biggest scandal EVER perpetrated by a Black man on the Black community, but the establishment media is refusing to cover it. That’s why I’ve become so fixated on bringing the machinations of these two demagogues to the attention of the Black community.
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So the Bottom Line is this - when people like myself criticize Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, or Boyce Watkins, we’re not criticizing them because they’re critical of President Obama; our problem with them is they’re cherry-picking their facts and telling half-truths to promote their own agenda.
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HEY, AREN'T YOU THE SAME GUY
WHO SAID I COULDN'T BE TRUSTED? 
A prime example of that is they are going out of their way NOT to tell the Black community that the United States Constitution gives sole control of spending to the United States House of Representatives, which is controlled by the Republicans. So the only way that President Obama can spend any money to assist the Black community, or anyone else, is to get the Republican House to go along with him.
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That’s why it’s so important for the president to hold together a coalition of Blacks, women, gays, Hispanics, and every other segment of the American population. He needs ALL of us to place pressure on the Republicans to loosen the purse strings in order for him to get anything done. So anytime you hear Tavis, West, or Watkins pointing their finger at what President Obama is doing for any other segment of the population, they’re doing you a disservice.
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Here’s how politics works - "you support me when I need you, and I’ll support you when you need me." So whenever President Obama does anything for other segments of the population, he’s building up political capital so he can help you. But, of course, he doesn’t discuss what he’s doing for the Black community for a very good reason - as Cornel says himself (when it’s convenient), "Race Matters."
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These gentlemen know full well that if President Obama runs around bragging about what he’s doing for the Black community, the Republicans are going to use that as leverage to tear his coalition apart. They would tell women, gays, Hispanics, and everyone else in America that Obama doesn’t care about them; all he wants to do is help his own people, and that message hurts the Black community. Don’t these so-called intellectuals recognize that? If they don’t, they’re dumb. If they do, that means that they’re purposely trying to mislead you. The question, then, is why?
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So the fact is, when people like Tavis, West, and Watkins run around telling you that the proof that President Obama is not working for you is that he refuses to throw his fist in the air, these people are working against you, not for you - and they know it. You see, their primary agenda is NOT about helping the Black community. Their agenda is about tearing President Obama down, and again, that hurts you. But they don't care - and that's the problem.
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Eric L. Wattree 
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

Friday, March 08, 2013

TAP DANCING FOR THE KLAN

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
TAP DANCING FOR THE KLAN
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I'm not here to defend President Obama, because as I pointed out in previous articles, I have an issue or two with some of his policies myself, just like I've had with EVERY White president. But I think we owe this brother the benefit of the doubt. He's plagued with enough problems in having to deal with world affairs and our domestic crisis, while at the same time, having to fight off racist Republicans and envious, self-serving turncoats like Tavis Smiley and Cornel West. So we shouldn't add yet another problem to his plate by forcing him to have to worry about whether he has the support of his own people.
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To be quit frank, I think there are only two kinds of people in this world - good people, and bad people. In addition, I believe the battle over race was a part of the last war. Those who are enlightened recognize that the current battle is over class, because the current powers that be don’t care any more about poor and middle-class White folks than they do Black people. Most White people recognize that fact. That's why Obama is president.  So while I often write about what’s in the best interest of the Black community as a whole, I rarely make race a part of my personal political calculations.
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But I consider the presidency of Barack Obama a unique situation, and what we’ve been watching with respect to many Black Obama critics should be regarded as a teaching moment, because it represents a cultural dysfunction that’s been played out thousands of times over the past four hundred years. Many of us have heard stories about Black self-hatred all of our lives, but due to President Obama’s high profile we now have the opportunity, as an entire culture, to see it being played out in all of its ugliness for the very first time.
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But of course, there are going to be a few of Obama's critics who are going to ask, "What are you saying, that Obama should be above criticism just because he’s Black?" Of course not, and the people who pose such a ridiculous question know that’s not what I’m saying before they even ask it. But just asking such a disingenuous question should also serve as a teaching moment - it shows the extraordinary lengths that such people will go to mask their "bligotry."
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Questioning President Obama’s policies is not the problem - it’s the mean-spirited way in which it’s being done. In fact, Black haters are not merely questioning Obama’s policies at all. More often than not these people are simply using policy differences as a pretext for making slanderous assertions about the president’s character as a whole - he’s a "war criminal," "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats," "a Rockefeller Republican in Blackface," and even, "He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination" [WHAT!!!?].  Notice that three out of the four slanders are racial in nature, and these quotes are from just one man - Cornel West.
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None of the criticisms above were legitimate attempts to address the president’s public policies. They were racial slanders, clear and simple. That clearly demonstrates that many Black Obama-haters are not nearly as interested in addressing public policy as they are in attacking the man himself. These slanders also demonstrate the fallacious allegation that people who object to their criticism are merely Obama cheerleaders. That's simply not true - what we’re against is what we’ve always been against - racist attacks.
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But even those haters who have the good sense to refrain from blatant, racist attacks often make themselves known by going over the top in their allegations regarding policy. They’ll often say things like, "Obama is a part of the machine." But since we’re not privy to the information that Obama is basing his decisions upon, nor his motives for making any given decision, any allegation being made about his being a part of any "machine" are wholly without supporting substantiation at best. Critics who suggest this are merely commenting on what things LOOK like to their jaundiced eye - or what they're trying to convince you to think they look like - without having a shred of evidence to support their views. Their allegations have no more basis in fact than that of the birthers.
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The reality is, being the first Black President of the United States, Obama can’t approach the nation’s problems in the same way that they were approached by his White predecessors. In many cases he has to take a circuitous approach to addressing issues in order to prevent the GOP from mischaracterizing his efforts with their very special kind of malevolent spin. Thus, the way that things may look, may not always be what they seem. So anyone who would lend comfort to the most steadfast enemies of the Black community by helping to drag this Black man through the mud is on what my good friend, Playthell Benjamin, would call, a fool’s errand. 
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There were people in the Tea Party who were consistently calling Obama a terrorist sympathizer, right up until he brought Osama Bin Laden’s head home in a bag. Bush spent nearly eight years and close to a trillion dollars trying to pull that off with no success, but Obama did it with three helicopters and a handful of courageous men without busting a sweat bubble - and he did it while America thought he was just kickin’ it.
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So this brother ain’t no punk, and he’s not the kind of person we should second guess without very good cause.  So yes, I think everyone in the Black community should get behind this brother - period. If we have a comment on policy, we should voice our concern, but we should do it politely, and very respectfully. Because while Obama is, and should be, the president of ALL of America, he is also the most high profile representative of the Black community in the entire world. So to be disrespectful of him, is to be disrespectful of us; and his success, is our success. 
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With regard to Cornel West, I can only say this - any Black man who tries to publicly engage in the Dozens against the first Black President of the United States cannot be regarded as a serious intellectual. He deserves very close scrutiny, because his behavior is not only disrespectful of the president, but it betrays a gross disdain for the Black community as a whole. So he can say whatever he likes about his motives, but his behavior lends comfort to the most dedicated enemies of the Black community. Thus, the issue is not even debatable - the stupidity he’s engaged in amounts to tap dancing for the Klan.
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com

Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

Sunday, March 03, 2013

We Must Never Confuse Education With Intelligence

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
We Must Never Confuse Education With Intelligence
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When we consider all of the problems that we have in the Black community, if anyone asked me what we are in most dire need of to resolve those problems, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second - I’d say education. Education is the key to resolving high unemployment, because it would enable us to create our own jobs; it is the key to reducing crime in the community, because if we educate ourselves properly we’ll become enlightened enough to recognize that simply gathering the most material "things" is not what makes life worthwhile; and finally, with the proper kind of education we’d stop worrying about what other people think of us and start focusing on what we think of ourselves.
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But with that said, it is also important to never confuse education - which I define as the science of efficient and independent thought - with indoctrination, the mere ability to regurgitate the thoughts of others - and it’s our tendency to do just that, that is the source of many of our problems, in not just the Black community, but in society as a whole.
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Our universities and various institutions of higher learning are great when it comes to teaching the science of technology - math, engineering, medicine, and other technical pursuits - but they fall far short of the mark when it comes to educating students in the pure, efficient, and independent ability to think. That’s why we have so many Ph.Ds running around saying things that essentially amount to, "Obama is un-American - he’s engaged in a socialist plot to protect my family." These people are unable to differentiate between the theoretical - their emotional, and thereby, erroneous, association of the word "socialist" with evil - from the practical - society's need to put policies in place that will promote the overall needs of the people, and the nation as a whole.  A given policy may be the perfect solution for one of the nation's biggest problems, for example, but because someone labeled it socialist, many will fight it to the bitter end, because they've been told that the solution constitutes socialism, and socialism is evil - even though, with all of their education, they can't explain what makes it evil.
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Thus, many of the people who we accept as "experts" in what I call the "speculative arts" - psychology, philosophy, sociology, political science, economics, etc. - routinely engage in reckless and unwarranted speculation as though it’s fact. That’s why we can’t assess, predict, or control human behavior with the precision that we can land a spacecraft on the moon. If a physicist, biologist, or medical doctor engaged in the kind of reckless speculation that these people routinely do, they’d be run out of the profession.
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One of the primary reasons that many of these people are so reckless in their thinking is, while it is true that these "highly educated" individuals have spent years in various classrooms, they haven’t been educated in the area of efficient and independent thought. Instead, they’ve spent their entire educational careers being indoctrinated into embracing the beliefs of long-dead White men. Now, that isn’t to say that the thoughts of the thinkers of the past shouldn’t be reviewed, but their thoughts shouldn’t be idolized and considered superior to our own, which is generally the case. As a result, many of our so-called intellectuals come out the other end of our most prestigious universities not as powerful independent thinkers, but as celebrated, but shallow-minded, regurgitators of other people’s thoughts.
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A perfect example of how our educational system is failing society in its responsibility to prepare the leaders in our society to think can be seen in the case of Rep. Michelle Bachmann. In 1988 Ms. Bachmann received an LL.M in tax law from the William and Mary School of Law, and she worked as a tax attorney prior to entering congress. Now, I don’t know what kind of tax lawyer she was, but I’m confident that most of the people reading this document will agree that a deep and independent thinker this lady is not. The very same is true of not just many, but the majority of people that we accept as "educated" based on their resume and credentials alone. If that were not the case, with all of the Ph.Ds being conferred across this country every year, one would think we'd live in a much more enlightened society.  George W. Bush is a product of Yale. Granted, he's not a Ph.D, but still . . .
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My point is this - the primary way that the establishment manages to control and bamboozle the people is by trotting out selected people that they want us to listen to, and then offering up their resume and credentials as justification for why we should hang on to their every word. And since most of us have been conditioned to be in awe of the reputations of the various prestigious institutions of higher learning - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. - the establishment can simply attach the name of one of these institutions to the person they're promoting, and more often than not, we’ll simply suspend all reason and critical thought and blindly accept whatever the person says as gospel. And in many cases, even when our common sense says, "Hey, what he just said doesn’t make sense," we’ll often simply chalk it up to our not being "educated enough" to grasp the nuances of his or her reasoning. That’s exactly how we get played, and we often pay these people ridiculous speaking fees for the privilege of being played.
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You can go into many courtrooms across this country and routinely witness two so-called experts taking completely opposite points of view on almost any subject, because they're saying what they're being paid to say. That's a flaw of human nature. So if you want to be enlightened, never blindly accept other people's points of view. Take the time to do the research and connect the dots for yourself.
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We should never give anyone else’s ability to think priority over our own. Simply because a person has more degrees than you do, that doesn’t mean that he or she is more intelligent than you are. If we take a brain surgeon with an IQ of 120, and a high school dropout with an IQ of 140, while the brain surgeon may have more knowledge at his immediate disposal than the high school dropout, he’ll never be as smart. Thus, in a situation where all things are equal, the high school dropout will be able to connect the dots much more efficiently than the brain surgeon every time. Dr. Ben Carson is an excellent example of that. The guy is a celebrated brain surgeon, but I know many high school dropouts who could pick his political ideas apart on one brain cell. He's obviously been taught WHAT to think, not HOW to think.
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So while we should always attempt to enhance our education, if circumstances prevent us from attending an institution of higher learning, we should always remember this - knowledge is free, and there’s just as much knowledge on Google, or at the corner library, as there is at Harvard University. So we should dedicate our lives to obtaining that knowledge, because once we have it, it doesn’t matter where it came from. In fact, while Harvard can expose you to knowledge, it cannot educate you. Education is a solitary pursuit, so the only one who can truly educate you, is yourself.
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Thus, whenever you begin to feel self-conscious over your lack of formal education, you should remember that Socrates - the father of modern thought - was a hood rat.  Look it up, and begin to educate yourself.
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THE EULIPIANS
Some of the greatest minds I've ever known
held court while sitting on empty milk crates
in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores.
At their feet I embraced the love of knowledge,
and through their tutelage learned to

defined self-worth in my own terms.
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These are the "Eulipians"—
writers, poets, musicians, painters,
and uncommon drunks—
those shade-tree philosophers who
contemplate the fungus between the
toes of society;
Who dance with reckless abandon,
unfettered by formal inhibition,
or the presumptuous
speculation of the ages;
Who live in county jails, cardboard boxes,
alley ways, and luxury Apartments;
Whose very existence exposes the scam
of Great Bruteland.
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While these obscure intellectuals
stood well outside the mainstream
of academy, I’ve watched
with astonished delight as
they sang, scat, and scribed their
philosophy into the mainstream
of human knowledge;
As they rammed forth the proposition
that knowledge is free 

thus, transcends the collusion
of caste and privilege.
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Bird, Malcolm, Langston, and Trane –
They all sang but one song,
a song dedicated to the proposition
that man’s innate thirst for knowledge
will someday overwhelm his passionate
lust for stupidity.
 
    

Eric L. Wattree
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Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.