Great thread!

As with many other threads discussing everything for musical forms to gun issues, everyone has put out well defined ideas (and perhaps personal ideals)

Chet W., you say that you are "very liberal", yet is consider myself "very conservative" and tend to agree with most of your assertions. In fact (a bit of a tangent here) the very concept of liberal and conservative are constructs of "civilization!" Personal responsibility is the core of any well functioning society. Often, it seems that many of the civiliztions in the world have lost the concept of personal responibility and the whole world has suffered.

Fadac, on many points I agree w/ you as well. On your point of flying verbage directed at you, I believe that by examining (and verbalizing dissent to) politically motivated strategies one should never be labeled, especially as I have been called a "racist" in the past for opposing the current set-up of aff. action. When working in social work, I found the vast majority of aff. action strategies either set people of color up to fail by placing unready and under educated people in difficult positions or working to place those same people in low paying, dead end jobs. While there were a few worthy plans, the vast majority, in my opinion, caused great harm among the populations they were intended to help. A saying that my boss and I always said to each other to maintain our sanity in dealing w/ at risk and chronically depressed populations was that our goal was to give them a hand up, not a hand out.

The tangent is over, but when you give someone a hand up, you let them get on their feet and assume personal responsibility for their actions, when you give them a hand out, you encourge the same behavior which earned them the hand out (not racially charge - current welfare rolls are majority caucasian in USA, and too many are getting a hand out)

ANyway, good thread.

John OSh