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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (3486)	4/12/1999 7:18:00 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

< Despite all our troubles in the US, the old maxim of equality under the law and a government of "law not of men" has produced an amazingly tolerant country. > Let's see....Mexican/American war, Indian war, Civil war....yeh, we've got a pretty good record of racial harmony...give or take a few million deaths.

To: D. Long who wrote (3486)	4/12/1999 8:04:00 PM
From: Stormweaver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

That's the new world order that the U.S. is making an example of Yugoslavia over; multi-ethnicity, make it work or we'll make it work for you. The problem is the older-world (eastern Europe) has much deeper ethnic roots and historical baggage. Our forcing it through force will only cause greater instability in the region. >>The US has held together quite fine, even composed of the very >>ethnic groups that in the Old World cant seem to find a reason to >>stop killing each other.

To: D. Long who wrote (3486)	4/12/1999 10:21:00 PM
From: James F. Hopkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

D; Just how tolerant you see this country as also depends on where you live and if your not at the bottom of the food chain. Those people in the US close to or at the bottom of the food chain no matter what their race do not see us as being as tolerant, and race or ethic differences can impact them more. Relatively speaking we are by far more tolerant than most of World , however we descended primarily from people fleeing persecution who condemned their persecutors and tend to have had some of that passed onto us. Still not every one will agree with you, some who by no actual fault of their own other than by circumstance of which they had no control landed in a hostile setting as an infant and inherited the all the trappings that go with keeping one at the bottom of social pyramid, often they live hand to mouth and it's not fair to expect them to see much beyond the plate in front of them, a small plate that they have to guard just to survive. That sounds a bit extreme, but we do tend to sweep our under privileged under the rug and have a uncanny way of dodging taht fact. There is no real wealth but the labor of man. Were the mountains of gold and the valleys of silver, the world would not be one grain of corn the richer; nor one comfort would be added to the human race. :Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792 - 1822, English writer ) ------------------- Now for an off topic long winded titbit about how great we aint. If we continue to Cripple our lower labor force with a lack of wages taht makes it almost impossible to maintain a family life, it sends more and more desperate women to abortion clinics, ( mostly the poor ) or forces them to try to raise a child on welfare and under all the "prejudice" that's inflicted on any one on welfare. Then we deprive their offspring of an education that can get them out of that, well if we keep that up eventually this great technology we came to depend on will kill us, as one way or another it will backfire if we don't use it to give life, and help out those at the lowest levels but just use it to imprison them. ------------------------ I Just watched a long documentary about U.S. prisons, while it touched on some important points, it missed some of the most important ones, ( and I believe it's because the people who made it just could not fathom the gulf ) Some of the interviews were good, but still even the best spoken inmate won't or cant accept much of the reality that put him there. The producers. (1) They avoided women penitentires. (2) They pointed out what the bare Geneva convention requirements were and showed us penitentiary's that meet those standards, I can show you many in the US that don't. (3) They pointed out we have over 2 Million people locked away Warning that's more than any other country in the world at this time. Some one better get the deeper meaning of that before long. They failed to point out we have 10 times that amount on parole and or probation, now take away the population that's not old enough to have gotten tangled up in the justice system before you figure the percentage of our population that's doing time ( in one form or another ). My main point is that's it's more than most people realize. (4) More prisons and tougher laws are not going to solve it, we need better laws that are both fair and simple enough for even the Joe who is below average to understand, along with some very serious changes in our education system. Lawyers are going nuts in this system and taking us with them. Passing tons of laws that only they can understand, it must be some sort of self proliferation that's built into their physic. (5) Above all it's education, education and education, the one common denominator that permeates the prisons in the U.S. & they did not point at is the fact that these people by and large did not get even a basic education. Many of them are smart, but the school system spit them out at an early age. We have fell down bad in our school systems and for every penny tight wad tax payers cut from a good school system they will pay a hundred dollars or more incarcerating the ones who because they or their parents were at the bottom food chain they didn't get it. For being the most powerful and supposedly richest country in the world our school systems have been an utter disgrace for years, and now it's showing really bad in the amount of people we have locked up. The war on crime has to start in the schools , and getting down the drop out numbers, if it don't we will lose it. If we are the most privladged people in the world then we better hold ourself to a higher standard, and stop looking around for scape goats, or this moment of glory won't last, in fact it will bite us on the arse. -------------------- Jim primenet.com