Comments by "Jack Haveman" (@JackHaveman52) on "PragerU"
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@ShnoogleMan
There is only one issue that I have with your argument. There are a lot of people that didn't think that the statue of Lee should have been removed. Not Nazis, not white supremacists, but ordinary people who believe that ALL aspects of our history should be honoured and remembered, even the negative. It should be remembered because it highlights that we are all human and the fight for human rights took hundreds, thousands of years and is still ongoing.
Are you seriously saying that because Nazis have their own reasons for letting that statue remain, these ordinary citizens can't have their own, separate opinions on the subject? The US is still a free country and people can believe as they want and not be pigeonholed into categories by those who would use it against them. They had every right to voice their opinion and they have every right to oppose Nazism and white supremacy, as well.
You painted a lot of people with a wide brush and not only is it unfair, it's dogmatic in nature. Like that woman, described in the NY Times, who went there and was NOT a part of the "Unite the Right" rallies, she has EVERY right to feel that the statue should remain. To call her a de facto Nazi is nothing but an attempt to silence an argument that might have merit.
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@ShnoogleMan
There were NO peaceful conservatives at the events at Charlottesville? You know this how? All those who were in favour of keeping the statue of Lee standing were all violent Nazis. That's quite an assumption and you have no way of proving that.
Statues can bring about conversations and spark an interest in the time or the statue and the struggles involved. Not everyone is a reader and I've spent hours, in museums, staring at paintings and sculptures of people and events of the past, some of which I hadn't heard of before and I'm an avid reader. It brings into context history, human frailty, struggle and pain. It also helps to bring understanding instead of a pervasive atmosphere of fault and blame. History, the world and humans are complex and we need to see it from ALL angles, not just the preferred narratives of those with agendas. It's why freedom is so important.
Lastly, Trump explicitly denounced Nazism and white supremacy. Whether there were good people on both sides are irrelevant if he believed that not all people on the 2 sides were there for violence and hatred. Basically saying that just because you believe that the statue must go or stay, doesn't automatically make you an evil person.
Then you bring up the Nazi statue argument. My family suffered greatly under the heel of Nazi occupation. My mother nearly starved to death over the winter of 45, eating only pencil sized eel for days at a time. I went, with my uncle, to the Jewish detention camp at Westerbork, a camp he was imprisoned in for almost 6 weeks and he told me of the horrors that he endured and witnessed. He wasn't Jewish so he went to a POW camp and was forced to work in the kitchens for 2 years. However, I had to work with a man who was in the SS as did others who were wounded fighting the Nazis and lost family to them. Was it our duty to hate this guy until the day he died? The war was over and we had to lay down our arms, in reality and metaphorically. We had to work together, sit together and talk to one another and try to understand why it all had to happen. Either that or we become the executioners, open our own death camps and or maybe just stew in our hate till the day we die. The victims of those times chose to forgive and live on. Of course not all of them but the large percentage of them did. What's really ironic is that those who were the direct victims of Nazi actions are more willing to forgive than those who've never had a Nazi hand raised to them.
Also, it isn't as if America invented slavery. Slavery has been an accepted part of humanity for thousands of years and endured through that millennia. The 19th century saw the end to slavery as being culturally and socially accepted. It was a terrible struggle, not just in the US, but in many other places. It might be more advantageous to offer an olive branch towards one another instead of fighting that war into eternity. Let's try to remember those that lived in those times with understanding, instead of hatred and anger. Not one of us lived their lives or experienced those times and have no right to judge them as our inferiors.
Do I like Nazi ideology? No, emphatically.....NO. However, I would never show up at a Nazi rally, today, armed with clubs, mace and or any weapons, ready to fight. I might decry what they're trying to accomplish, but, right now, we're not a war and I would hope that we, as civilised humans, have progressed enough to fight them with logic and reason and not with brute strength. Reserve that as the last option. Antifa tactics are not the way to defeat ideology and I stand against them as strongly as I do Nazism.
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@Leo Weisberger
Socialism definition:
"a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."
An economy owned or regulated by the community. That's socialism. What I described was a social program. No nation can exist without social programs. The military, transportation, a court system and more, are programs that are not best to the whims of powerful individuals but as the purview of elected officials, chosen by people as their representatives.
However, the economy, should be at the direction of those same people, based on the will of a free market and those who would answer the needs of those individuals, in the market, who choose how those needs are met. Socialism, as stated in the definition that I copied from a dictionary, does not meet the standards that I just set.
When Bernie Sanders said the he wanted to change the US into a socialist state, similar to that of the Scandinavian countries, the Prime Minister of Denmark informed him that Denmark was NOT a socialist country. He said it was a free market system with strong social safety nets.
In Canada, we have a social medical system, as it is felt that our health has no market value. I cannot use my health as collateral to get a loan and a country does not assess its financial status using the health of its citizens as a financial asset. Assets are judged on production of market goods. If the market is controlled by the people, ostensibly, by the government as their representative, it is a socialist system. If it's a free market system, beholden only to the market itself and the rule of law, then it is NOT socialism.
I advocate for a free market economy. I also acknowledge that a community must also pool together to support the areas that cannot be at the whims of a free market, the areas not involved in the production of goods that accrue wealth.
I paid into my pension. It's mine, NOT the government's. I'm owed it because I paid into it, just like any other pension.
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@Sylvertaco
They wrote the Constitution under their understanding of society of that time. An understanding that was the norm for a couple of thousand years. Many of the founding fathers were already anti-slavery but to mount a good defence against the British, they had to compromise to the states that wanted slavery. It was a bone of contention right from the get go. 20 years after independence, the Atlantic slave trade was abolished and it was a step by step progression towards the end of slavery which was finally achieved. It wasn't easy and yet, any reading of the Constitution, as it is written, had to acknowledge the rights of all humans. Those who supported slavery and were against women's suffrage, didn't go by what the Constitution actually said but by tradition and their belief on what the founding fathers meant. In other words, they didn't want to accept that Africans were men and that went against both fact and the Bible, in fact, the belief that even Africans had a soul. If they have a soul they had to except that they were also men.
I'm not saying this out of a Christian belief system. I'm saying this from what is taught in the Bible and the idea that all men are created equal before God. They had to face the fact that if there was only one way to interpret the Constitution and to dispute it, they would have to accept the idea that Africans were not humans or subject to the grace of God.
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@TheRed02151
I'm NOT a Trump fanatic so there goes THAT assumption. If you made that assumption about me, then what assumptions have you made about Sorbo. Now, YOU'RE the one being careless.
I don't care for Obama, either. His "hope and change" slogan happened all right. By the end of his presidency, major cities were being burnt in a wave of racial strife. I had sincerely thought that his presidency would improve race issues but it made it even worse...by far. However, as much as I don't like Obama, the immigrant thing is ridiculous. You see, I can separate people from ideas....something that you can't seem to do. I don't like Trump but I agreed with quite a few of his programs. NOT ALL OF THEM!!!! Get that straight. Some I didn't like at all but most of all I didn't like his personality.
You see, I can separate the person from ideas and I don't judge a person on single issues. Life is much more complex than that. I didn't support the Democrats in the last election but I fervently wished that it had been someone else, besides Trump, running for president. You see ....ONCE AGAIN.... I can separate people from ideas and one wrong idea doesn't say everything about a person. People are too complex to do that and only the most simplistic of people judge a person on a single issue.
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@Dillon Duncan
Way to go with the demonisation of one side. Just to emphasise how "horrible" the Israelis are, you throw in the "murder children" phrase, insinuating that killing Palestinian children is an Israeli tactic. Hyperbole like that should really help negotiations and understanding.
Israel isn't going deeper into Palestine at all. They fought a war against outsiders, Jordan, Egypt and Syria with help from various other Arab countries and eventually took this land over. Israel actually gave Egypt back the Sinai Peninsula and voluntarily allowed the Gaza strip to become solely under the control of Palestinians. Did they take advantage of it? NO. Instead, the Palestinians there, Hamas and the PLO, took money, given from outside sources, and bought military goods with it and lined the pockets of top Palestinian leaders. If you would EVER get into all the times that the Palestinians were offered an independent state of their own, you'd know that they refused EVERY time. Yet, they don't need to have it.
There are nearly 2,000,000 Muslims, called Palestinians, living in Israel proper. Not in Gaza or the West Bank, but in Israel. They have full citizenship, able to vote, have sat in the Knesset, joined that Israeli military and police, own land and businesses. They have every right that an Jewish Israeli has. However, the Palestinians don't want that. They want to RULE the Levant and have said so repeatedly. In other words, the Dimmi state, where Muslim rule supreme and others live there under conditions set by the Muslim leaders, the clerics.
There has NEVER been an independent Palestinian state in the Levant. It has always been controlled from outside. The British, the Ottoman Empire, the Egyptian Mamluks, the Mongols, the Kurds, the Crusaders, the Arabs, the Byzantines, the Romans. The last time the area was independent was under the rule of the Maccabees, over 2000 years ago. They led a Jewish rebellion against a Greek ruler, Antiochus IV. The inhabitants of the Levant have always been diverse, including local Muslims, Jews, Christians and pilgrims from various religious orders. The Jews didn't start to dominate till after they migrated there due to persecution in Europe and other countries, starting when the Ottomans controlled the region and growing when the British had it for a short time. Under the British, the local Muslims, were offered a homeland, TWICE, but the Muslims turned the offers down both times. In spite of the fact that Jews and Christians had always lived there, the Muslims wanted complete control for themselves.
This is history and the facts.
Also, it seems that you've conveniently forgotten all the rocket attacks by Palestinians. Forgotten the 25,000 dollars, American, the Saddam Hussein, would give to the families of suicide bombers, who would strap bombs to themselves and blow themselves up in busy shopping malls and markets. None of that counts for you or you've ignored it.
I don't think that Israel should be expanding into the West Bank. They should have done with that area the same as they did the Gaza strip and allowed the Palestinians to live there, independently. However, that was a decision they made after Palestinian leaders REJECTED the offer of a Palestinian state in the region. So what do the Israelis do now? Leave the area in limbo or every Jew in Israel, all 6 million plus, get out because that's the only thing that would satisfy Palestinian leadership.
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@july6949
Really? Neo-liberal capitalism did that? You do realise that this capitalism that you're speaking of is an idea, don't you. Ideas don't build bombs. People do. So....what you're saying is that some people, who believe in the idea of capitalism, ideologists, killed him in the name of Capitalism? That's seem hard to believe.
Was this bomb blast in a western capitalist country? A country that respects the rule of law? If it did, it wasn't capitalism that killed him, it was people protecting their own self interest and they committed a crime and should face the consequences of that crime.
However, I don't know the specifics of this incident because you're claim is too broad to truly assess what the motives were. Had you given the details, like location, the motive of the perpetrators and why they'd set off a bomb, we could all see how true that claim of yours truly is. Without it, I'd say it's just hyperbolic nonsense, prompted by an ideological mindset.
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@july6949
I'm truly sorry for your loss but I strongly disagree with your assessment of capitalism and how it killed your friend.
Capitalism is an economic system. It's a means of production, a way to create value through labour and creativity by allowing the individual the freedom to operate their economy within bounds. Those bounds being the rule of law. Capitalism is implemented by people and those people are bound by that rule of law. It doesn't matter under what system of production that is being used. If you do something that contravenes that law, you are now acting outside the acceptable behaviour of your political entity as enshrined in your legal code.
Columbia is a western country but when I used that term, I was referring to the first world countries that pattern themselves after the type of government the US has. This would be Canada, Britain, Japan, South Korea, western Europe, etc....
Columbia is NOT included in this group. They are a developing country with a mid range economy at best.
You may ask why I stress the importance of the rule of law and the reason is this. Capitalism, indeed any society, will only reach success if their set of laws are fully respected, understood and implemented. That clearly didn't happen in the case of your friend. Every person is bound by the legal code of their country. The central theme being that everyone has the right to their personal freedom as long as it doesn't impose on the freedom of others. That has NOTHING to do with capitalism, except the freedom to conduct personal economy as one sees fit.....as long as it doesn't contravene the law and principles of human rights. Owning my own company does NOT release me from any obligation to the law or the freedom of others.
Your friend died, not because of capitalism, but because there were those who believed themselves free of the obligations of the law or the preservation of human rights. They killed him for personal interests, no different than had I entered my neighbour's home and killed him to obtain his property. If the government, in effect, those who are a part of the government, allows it to happen, indeed sanctions my actions, then they too are violating the personal right of my neighbour to own his property, legally attained and to his life.
If the Columbian government, the individuals the run that government, allowed and sanctioned the murder of your friend, they violated his human rights. They did it for self interest. That's not capitalism. It wouldn't matter what economic system they believed in. They broke the law. Had they been socialist, they still broke the law. Had it been a huge company that sanctioned it, the law is still broken. Had they been a religious faction, Catholics, Muslims, Zoroastrians or whatever, they broke the law.
This is why, in the United States, an incoming president swears to uphold the Constitution. It is vital to the freedom of individual rights. He doesn't swear to protect capitalism because capitalism is an expression of those individual rights, the freedom of the individual to create value. If the president acts against that Constitution, he breaks the law.
We have laws because we understand that humans are flawed and will act in their own self interest, even if it means violating the self interests of others. Everyone, operating in a capitalist economy, is still bound by those laws. The economy doesn't rule. It is still subservient to a Constitution and the guidelines that allow human rights for all.
To finish, Capitalism did not kill your friend. People, working outside the law with no regard for human rights, killed your friend.
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@billpracells8876
I've watched this video before. This doesn't prove that Trump supports the alt-right at all. It's trying to prove that PragerU is mistaken about how the MSM didn't report Trump's condemnation of Neo-Nazis and advance the insinuation that everyone that went there to protest the removal of the statue had to be alt-right and Nazi sympathisers.
You've already been shown that General Lee did NOT support slavery. So why did he fight on the Confederate side? He did it because he was loyal to the state of North Carolina and because the Civil War was more than a fight over slavery. It was a fight over state's rights, as well. In fact, the slaves weren't set free until AFTER the war had started, almost 2 years later and Lee opposed the war but reluctantly joined because he felt a loyalty to his home and his state.
People fought for the south for various reasons, NOT just to fight for slavery. In fact, most Confederate soldiers never owned a slave. Why would they fight and die for something that they would never have? Why would Lee fight for a cause that he had openly opposed for years?
That's why that statue shouldn't be removed. People, like you, want everything to be simple. "He's evil and he's good" and there's always that implication that you're good, as well, because you support the "good" guy. The world is more complex than that and so are people. That's the discussion that we should be having. We should be trying to understand the world of the time and the motivations of all the combatants, on both sides, and not turn it into a proxy war today of "good vs evil". That's a childish view of the world. Worse.....it implies that you'd never be on the side of evil...EVER.
Nietzsche once wrote "Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." You could become that monster in a zealous rage.
That's why the statue shouldn't be torn down. It's to remind us that this conflict was more complex than we can know and that we have to discuss the frailty of the human heart. It's to prevent us from vilifying one another through full understanding.
The protests about the statue had been ongoing. The neo-Nazis and white supremacists went there to advance their own agenda and because of a disagreement, over that statue, that was already in progress and had been for a long time.
I know this is a long comment but life and people are more complex than. "They're EVIL!!!!". That simplistic AND dangerous.
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