I posted this in the wrong forum.

I really suggest listening to Bill O'Reillys speech on his TV show about the recent shootings and other tragedies here and abroad, PM me for link. Since it would be considered political, I won't post it. I don't normally agree with his views, but maybe this one has some substance.

 

Do you mean the phone-in of 7/22?

What he says seems to be fairly obvious, other than the "Europe is on the verge of anarchy" bit, which is way overblown. They're not having a great year there, but they're not running around in the streets like a Godzilla movie either.

I do watch a bit of O'Reilly every now and then, as I watch or listen to a bunch of other people, and I listened to the Democratic convention tonight, because I like to know what different people are saying. To me, O'Reilly is like a stopped clock: Every now and then I agree with him 100%. A lot of the time, I don't agree with him at all.
Of course, that goes for a lot of other people, too. Heck, I even agree with a few things that HRC says, sometimes.

- Eric

 

http://www.cnsnews.com/video/nationa...s-race-problem

These remarks were not related to any call in. Just one of his commentaries.

 

Not sure I can comment on this thread here but the moderators can remove it if need be.
My thoughts on O'Rielly kind of parallel Eric's. I don't always agree with him but he does make a good point and most times I think he is correct. He is old school though and rarely can see the whole picture unless it agrees with him. I think that's the same for all humans in general, we are what we are.
We all have agendas and that will never change, it's human nature. Whether O'Riellys is genuine or a product of his conservative talk show or both is debatable. Things on TV tend to be simplistic fixes because frankly you can't have long drawn out discussions and still keep an audience interested. Snappy one liners and quick fixes are all the rage. I don't think his fix is that simple though. It's a start but environment is also a great motivator on the disillusioned and disenfranchised minds. The problem of violence and violent behavior is multi-faceted and cannot be broken down into a few simple phrases or catch all fixes.
There is an extreme lack of meaningful leadership in this country and it starts there Anyone can demonize the simple easy to target things such as guns or single parenting but they are only parts of the bigger picture and problem.
Unfortunately I could ramble on about this for hours but that wouldn't fit into the neat little sound bite category would it?

 

O'Reilly is basically rehashing Daniel Patrick Moynihan's report "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action" from 1965.

He makes some valid points, but he emphasizes "personal choice" too much - it's all well and good to discuss personal choice in the context of an adult who has been raised well, and has a number of options in life, but you have to look at it differently when you're talking about the choices made by children at the ages of 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old, which will affect the direction of their lives irreversibly.

I was told from an early age that I'd damned well better get good grades, get into a good college, and make something of myself, and I was told why, and I was given the tools to do that (time to sit and study, someone to answer questions, someone to tell me to stick with it when I wasn't getting it, etc.).
I remember kids in grammar school, of all shades, who were wild, undisciplined jerks.
They didn't have parents at home who had it together and were able to help them.

I spent years working very closely with this sub-population, and I can tell you a number of things, starting with the fact that this is not a monolithic group, it is comprised of a huge variety of different individuals, with different attitudes and capabilities, just like everyone else.
I can also tell you that there is no way that a girl who's had 2 children by the time she was 17 is going to be able to raise those kids in the way that they need to be raised, whether she be white, black, or anything else.

There is a violence reduction project that has shown surprisingly high success, in which the very small number of kids in a neighborhood who are responsible for the vast majority of violence are intensively targeted by older former bad-guys, which is being deployed in a very few cities, and whose founders appealed directly and personally to our President for financial help to spread it further, and were refused (I cannot recall its name, but the entire thing, and the Administration's refusal to back it, was the subject of a very long New York Times article within the past year).

The highfalutin' moral stuff is all well and good, but actually moving from the theory to the reality, in a time frame of less than several decades, is very near to impossible, while, at the same time, there is an established, working system that has shown excellent results within very short periods, which the government refuses to promote.

And that, dear readers, is why nobody has any faith in our government these days.

- Eric