The Daily Skunk

I agree to some extent with you Odd. But, I do think we should have common goals and work towards them. I do believe all children at the least are created equal when it comes to: Health care, education, and simply put, the best life possible.
To answer the question about wages - even in socialism their is a hierarchy of pay based on education.
NEVER will I support the idea that everyone should be paid the same - that is the removal of incentive. When you remove incentive, expect at the best mediocrity and indifferent populations or much worse.
I;m not going to say I agree with this statement entirely “We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.”, but I do think there is some good justification on his part for this statement.
The part of the speech that is most meaningful to me starts here:
“too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.”

I read this and think of our current illegal alien situation. Here are my conclusions:

In support of his statements(in my opinion) I offer 3 statements. #1 is basic economic principle and #2 is basic economic principle extrapolated.

1)Educate your countries population regardless of their citizenship.
2)Take care of the sick that are in your country regardless of their citizenship.

Now, an statement why it isn’t practical also using basic economic principle.
1) It isn’t possible to have more people using than contributing.

Basically,there will be a point when the number of people using the resources will exceed the amount of resources available (some states are at this point already).

Anyway, my “take away” here is that I do believe that the first 2 statements are not only the right thing to do morally, they are the only thing to do for OUR societal preservation.

william