yokel: Great post! Must say that I don’t think the “left” truly believes in “social liberty” or anything like that. I think that their strategy is to use wedge issues to create cracks in society and then to fill in those cracks with political and economic power. Things like, racism, colonialism, patriarchy, richest 1%, white guilt, climate change, feminism, war on women and many others are the wedge issues the left uses.
Walkalong: I also appreciate honest opinions and a good healthy disagreement. Its a great way to examine one's own beliefs!
I guess my argument would be that blacks are by a good margin the most religious race of people in the USA. Any time I drive through a predominately black neighborhood I am amazed by how many churches there are, how often people are wearing a Jesus T-shirt, walking to or from church or just talking about Jesus or the bible. The breakdown of religiosity in america is as follows:
http://www.pewforum.org/2009/01/30/african-americans-and-religion/
Most Religious - Blacks > Latinos > Whites > Asians - Least Religious
Similarly if you look at corporal punishment by race you will find that it is most frequently used by blacks:
http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2011...icans-most-likely-to-use-physical-punishment/
Most likely to spank - Blacks > Latinos > Whites > Asians - Least likely to spank
What this doesn’t address is the frequency of spanking or religious attendance. From my own admittedly anecdotal expediency I would imagine in the cases of both religiosity and corporal punishment to be exponentially more frequent as you go up the scale. I know white people who go to church once in a while or who occasionally spank their kids. Im sure if you asked them they would proudly say that they do go to church and that they do spank their kids. But from what I have seen in my personal experience these beliefs are MUCH stronger in the black communities. I see blacks poring into the churches and shouting at and smacking around their kids much more frequently than other groups of people. I guess if religion or spanking was going to fix the problems in black communities it would have done it by now.
Single motherhood we agree on but the breakdown is as follows:
Most single motherhood - Latinos > Blacks > Whites > Asians - Least single motherhood
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db18.htm
I predict the higher incidence of single motherhood among latinos is due to illegal immigrants taking advantage of social welfare programs. Just what I have seen working in the medical field.
I guess my argument would be that if one wants to be successful a good idea is to emulate groups of people who are more successful than your own. The same general trend holds true for criminality, divorce rates, IQ, academic performance, income
(Most Successful) Asians > Whites > Latinos > Blacks (Least Successful)
Dan