Makes sense, although there are lot of other "charities" that I'm pretty sure have no accountability. I'm guessing this one got removed cause it is under the most scrutiny by the public.
That's a different and completely unrelated [1] organization that happens to have a similar name (Black Lives Matter Foundation vs Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation).
Yeah, it seems here that people are just getting confused about which organization is actually in charge due to two different organizations registering very similar names. I wonder if they trademarked the brand Black Lives Matter, and if so if they attempted to enforce it to prevent something like this from happening, or if they are in fact affiliated with each other.
Maybe there should be a BLM ETF with all the organizations in one bucket? Then you can spread out your risk in case one of them actually intends to be legitimate. Excuse the sarcasm.
Corporations are more concerned about the signal donating money sends than the actual effectiveness of the receiving organization. Did Amazon independently donate any money to this organization?
BLMGN was a small group running a big scam. It was mostly a sink for corporate "blackwashing" PR spend, as megacorps rushed to fake "doing something woke" in 2020.
Both hijacked the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter for profit.
I would imagine the Amazon process is fairly automated so there's no scrutiny, bias, etc. Fact is, NPOs have certain legal/tax. requirements so the data in question shouldn't be a problem, unless it is.
Maybe there's a good reason for the disconnect, but two yrs running is not a good sign.
Exactly. I don't know why everyone including the big tech companies fell for the BLM grift so that they could scam their 'supporters' into taking the money and now running off with their donations which was used to buy properties, mansions, etc.
Sean Kevin Campbell's article was some great investigative journalism. Highly recommend reading to anyone interested in deeper knowledge about this controversy. I've seen several pundits (on "both" sides) regurgitate his work inaccurately, so think reading his article directly is important.
Because they had a problem and they wanted a solution. It's basically "blackwashing" and BLMGNF (good night funds?) was there to "sell" them the solution to a problem they were facing.
There's basically zero desire to actually really work on any problem that isn't related to their stock portfolio, so they jump at it and post some PR and then they're done.
Happens time and time again, more or less legit depending. Look up donations to environmental groups whilst the business doesn't change much if anything about what they do.
Giving the public something to focus their attention on rather than goverment and corporate America (and the relationship between the two) is a shrewd investment in my speculation.
I live in portland and amazon suggested that i buy clippers, laser pointers, and balaclavas during the riots.
Also made their banner says BLM for two or so weeks
The BLM movement and the BLM organization are different. Much the same way that Americans will all claim to be democrats but less than half will claim to be Democrats.
I think in this instance "democrat" is being used to mean "supporter of democracy".
I don't think you aren't an American if you aren't a supporter of democracy, per se, but I do think the principle is a fairly core tenet of what it is, or at least is supposed to be, to be "American". I would be unsurprised if other people said you were un-American for feeling this way.
Sorry no, democracy is not a core tenant of America... Core tenant's of America's founding where Individual rights and self governance.
The Founders took great pains to LIMIT the amount of democracy in our system, because they understood the problems with democracy. The house of Representatives was the only democratically elected part of the government for a reason. We ignored them at our own peril..
>like why you think black and female humans should not have voting rights
So you subtle call me a racist, but no one mentioned it? Really.....
No where in any comments ever have a stated or implied support for that. Understanding history, understanding the context of the decisions and no applying modern ethical standards to history is a proper way to learn from history
Viewing history with a modern ethical lens like so many people are today destines you to never understanding history and thus never learning from it.
Maybe because this is text you are failing to properly interpret my words.
-The post you replied to did not contain the word racism
-The post was calling into question the exclusion of certain classes of humanoids from the framework of rights agreed on at birth of US
-No commenter said the words "you are racist"
-You failed to offer why the exclusion of black or female people is just
In “Notes on the State of Virginia,” Jefferson wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever…” He believed that to keep slaves in bondage, with part of America in favor of abolition and part of America in favor of perpetuating slavery, would result in civil war. Jefferson’s prediction was correct: in 1861, the contest over slavery sparked a bloody civil war and the creation of two nations — Union and Confederacy — in the place of one.
This is democracy. You cannot have self-governance without democracy. If not everyone is enfranchised, not everyone has self-governance. You can quibble about representative democracy, but it's still democracy at its core.
Now yes, as the other poster mentions, many of the tenets of the founders' approach to representative democracy were intended to limit political participation by people who were not white, male, and landowners. Thankfully, many of those policies [edit: have since been changed].
> The house of Representatives was the only democratically elected part of the government for a reason. We ignored them at our own peril..
Keep in mind that by the definition you're using here, there's a solid argument to make that neither the US senate nor the US presidential elections are "democratic" today due to the inherent undemocratic nature of the electoral college and differing vote values of residents of different states. So this is still the case, and perhaps you've misidentified the problem.
(I always wonder why we deify a bunch of mostly 30 year olds from 270 years ago as though they had the perfect ideas about government and we haven't learned anything in the intervening centuries)
> Thankfully, many of those policies were short-lived.
How exactly do you figure? I'm looking at women's suffrage in 1920, Reconstruction era and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and North Carolina's property requirement removal in 1856 and I'm not sure if our ideas of short-lived are similar.
True, I actually agree with you, although I've gotten pushback before for saying that they weren't short-lived, because some places (e.g. Boston) did get rid of the property requirement only a year or two after the founding, and women could vote in NJ in 1776, but lost the ability in 1807.
So like I think its probably most precise to say that they were usually long-lived, but not universally. I'll reword my prior comment but leave this here.
You can not look history from a lens of our modern ethics. Doing so is fraught with problems and you end up missing the the lessons history has for us, and worse you can never see anything good about history.
Slavery was terrible, but when people look at history I have often had people point to the 3/5's clause in the constitution as an example of racism. They don't understand that is was the abolitionist that fought for that, the slave owners wanted all slaves to be counted as whole persons, it would have given them more power and likely could have resulted in slavery lasting longer.
You never learn that the original draft of the Declaration Condemned slavery as one of the crimes committed by the King, Jefferson writing "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him". no documented reason has been given for why that was removed but most believe it was because of just 2 colonies, South Carolina and Georgia.
To paint history with a modern lens destines you to never understanding and thus never learning from it.
>>keep in mind that by the definition you're using here, there's a solid argument to make that neither the US senate nor the US presidential elections are "democratic"
The Senate should not be voted on at all IMO, I think that 17th Amendment has been a net negative for the nation. It has take the voice of the states out of the Federal government and has lead to a HUGE consolidation of power, elimination of checks in the system, and over all been bad for the republic.
As far as the electoral college, and democracy, if you support federalism, and believe the in the Idea of 50 United States coming together for the common economic and defensive goals then the electoral college is very democratic, however if you are a supporter of "America" where by the States are not really independent and to be treated as sub servant vassals of the Federal government then you would view it as non-democratic.
Given the US Constitution allows for the States to come together to overrule the federal government or even abolish it I would say we are a collection of 50 States united under a common set of laws and principles, i.e the United States of America.
>>I always wonder why we deify a bunch of mostly 30 year olds from 270 years ago as though they had the perfect ideas about government
I dont really think I have done that here, nor do I normally, Infact I am huge believer in the statement of "The US Constitution has either authorized the government we now have, or has been powerless to prevent it, in either case it is unfit to exist"
I have massive problems with the US Constitution but I highly doubt we are going to agree with what those problems are, as my problem with the US Constitution is it has given TOO MUCH power to government, has allowed for massive "interpretation" of the text to all the federal government do just about anything it wants.
I want a VERY VERY VERY small limited "night watchmen" like government, not this large overarching parental government that we look to for the solution to every problem in our lives
I look back to the original constitution, you see racism and an attempt put white men in power, I see a set of principles for limited government that would start the world down the path of the greatest expansion of Individual freedom in world history. Of course the US Constitution did not exist in a vacuum, and was not the sole reason for this expansion, but it was part of it.
I wish they would have had the ability to get more individual freedoms for everyone into our founding (many tried) I wish we would have more limited on governmental power, but I also understand the political realities of the day.
In the 200+ years since we have done alot of good things to advance those principles and expand individual freedom, some things too longer than they should ha...
> You can not look history from a lens of our modern ethics. Doing so is fraught with problems and you end up missing the the lessons history has for us, and worse you can never see anything good about history.
You absolutely can though. There aren't really problems with it. The problems you describe aren't problems with the ethical lens you look at history with. They're just historical facts that I guess you thought I didn't know. As for "anything good about history" I'm not really sure what you mean. History is amoral. It isn't good or bad, it just is. I think it's good to analyze it through a wide variety of lenses. Analyzing actions both via modern and contemporary lenses makes sense, both have value!
> Slavery was terrible, but when people look at history I have often had people point to the 3/5's clause in the constitution as an example of racism. They don't understand that is was the abolitionist that fought for that, the slave owners wanted all slaves to be counted as whole persons, it would have given them more power and likely could have resulted in slavery lasting longer.
Right so to rephrase this: neither the north nor the south consider black people worthy of citizenship/personhood. Both (and admittedly primarily the south) were willing to use them as a political football anyhow though. Like the north's position here isn't noble or anything. It's all bad. Its an interesting historical fact, yes, but there's no ethical lesson to be found.
> You never learn that the original draft of the Declaration Condemned slavery as one of the crimes committed by the King, Jefferson writing "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him".
I mean but you still do learn this. Nothing stops you. It just again, isn't noble. It's perhaps worse? The colonists had no excuse. They knew slavery was monstrous and yet the allowed their new nation to be founded with it, and kicked the can down the road (Article 1, Section 9).
Like do you not find it terribly hypocritical to use this as one of the intended reasons to declare independence, and then turn around and do it yourself immediately? Like judging Jefferson by Jefferson's own ethics, he was "violating [human nature's] most sacred rights of life & liberty".
> The Senate should not be voted on at all IMO, I think that 17th Amendment has been a net negative for the nation.
Sure, yeah, even if we assume that's true (I think the federal system is fairly problematic, but let's pretend it's not), the rampant fraud in senate appointments wasn't great.
> has allowed for massive "interpretation"
I agree with you here. Comparing the US constitution to any modern European constitution and for example one thing we've learned is that a constitution should be written with precision, not in vague flowery language.
> I look back to the original constitution, you see racism and an attempt put white men in power, I see a set of principles for limited government that would start the world down the path of the greatest expansion of Individual freedom in world history.
I see both, but by your own admission it failed at getting you limited government, and the racism is still around.
> I have often had people point to the 3/5's clause in the constitution as an example of racism.
Because it is.
> They don't understand that is was the abolitionist that fought for that
No, they didn't.
Abolitionists fought for...abolition. But there weren't many around among the Framers.
People who were neither slavers nor politically allied with them (but also not abolitionists in any substantial sense fought for slaves not to count for apportionment.
> the slave owners wanted all slaves to be counted as whole persons,
That's true, but no one fought for the 3/5 compromise. That’s why it's called a “compromise”. And it's closer to the position of the racist slaveholders than that of the also racist, but less so, people who were fine with slavery existing but against giving extra votes to slaveholders (by exactly the degree that 3/5 is closer to 1 than 0.)
Splitting the difference between racist, slavery accepting factions, in a way which favors the more racist one is, well, pretty racist.
I don't know of any American who claims to be a democrat without also claiming to be a Democrat; the terms are synonymous with the political party in the US.
While the literal term isn't used the way the parent describes I believe that their comment is trying to communicate "While only half of Americans describe themselves as Democrats, most Americans would say they're "an advocate or supporter of democracy" (the definition of a democrat).
Right, but when arguing semantics, then semantics matters. "democrat" as in "someone who advocates democracy" simply isn't in common usage here.
Likewise, if I said I donated to BLM, odds are good I am talking about the fund by that name, not an abstract concept of a movement that random people ephemerally belong to.
Not answering your question, but making sure the clarification is made that we (in the USA) do not live in a Democracy. We live in a Constitutional Republic.
I know, I know... some people cringe when someone points this out, but it's true.
Purports to be about consent of the governed, will of the people, popular rule etc. In reality, you can't even prevent your own children from being taught as truth some pseudomoral garbage that maybe 5-10% of the population believes. Basically it transfers power to the most motivated actors, almost regardless of their popularity.
> you can't even prevent your own children from being taught as truth some pseudomoral garbage that maybe 5-10% of the population believes.
What are you referring to? Also, you can home-school your kids. Or just move someplace where nobody cares.
It's not perfect, but name something that gives you remotely as much freedom and power over your government.
Many millions have given their lives, physically or temporally, to making it better, to give you and I the historically unequalled freedom, security, and prosperity we were born into. If you see problems - and so do I - how about helping make it better rather than sitting around criticizing while others do the work?
It requires people to be educated about what they are voting on. Having people spend time educating themselves wastes a lot of societal time. Voting doesn't scale well so people end up delegating their votes to someone else who usually doesn't have the same exact beliefs and may vote different than themselves. It turns into a popularity contest. The process of making decisions can be slow.
If we aren't a democracy, can we just ignore your opinion and do what we want?
> Voting doesn't scale well
It's scaled amazingly well, far beyond what the creators could have imagined. Billions vote around the world. In the US, without looking up the population in 1776, it's probably scaled 100x.
And it's been, by far, the most successful, free, prosperous, stable, functional form of government in human history. Name any that comes close - any country that has come close in history that isn't a democracy. Name a better form of government, or a country in any time and place that people would prefer to live in. Note the massive migration to democracies. It's like citing Apple Computer as a company that doesn't scale well (except there are other companies in Apple's league, and no other form of government competes with democracy).
The only question is, who is so anxious to tear it down and why?
You don't have to answer as we've definitely drifted off topic.
Is there a reasonable solution to these problems? I feel like without the popularity contest element, that's only more delegating to those who don't necessarily vote the way people would want. Without the delegating, there is stronger requirements on a citizen to educate themselves.
Representative democracy seems to be at the rough point of compromise between these downsides.
Actual democracy may be fine, but democracy as practiced here on Earth is usually a theatrical version of the real thing.
As an example: M4A has strong bipartisan support among the public, but politicians discuss it using rhetoric and propaganda, demonstrating that it is fake.
OP phrased that weirdly (and apparently doesn’t know that no one calls themselves a small d democrat - just not a phrase normal people use).
The point though, is that most people who support ending police brutality know that BLM Global Network Foundation is mismanaged. There are many other groups doing work to fight against police brutality which have more support from people involved in that movement.
Well, it seems this 'confusion' has tricked even the biggest companies to not only 'show support' for the movement with their now pointless banners, but also donate to the organisation which basically failed to be held accountable for the missing $60M that was spent on properties.
They supported both, including the 'Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation'.
Probably true when they donated money. Certainly not true when they put up posters or claimed to support things. Fraudsters cloaking themselves in the names of things is pretty common throughout hot button political issues, although sometimes it's fraud and sometimes it's unintentionally mismanaging money. I mean, the trucker thing in Canada raised millions of dollars, and while some of it has not been transferred because of the apparent fraud, only $1 million was only ever planned to be spent on the trucker thing and the other $7 million was destined for the organizer's bank account.
In general, there are no trademarks on social movements, and it's a tough problem.
> it's the money they reportedly had on hand at last account.
Exactly. Everyone knows that the 'missing' $60M didn't go to their own causes, but was spent on themselves (and everything else unrelated to BLM), just like what fraudsters would do. They were successful at manipulating the emotions of their supporters and executed a magnificent scam that even tricked the largest of companies.
> The BLM movement and the BLM organization are different. Much the same way that Americans will all claim to be democrats but less than half will claim to be Democrats.
It's more different than that between the BLM movement and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation organization (which, despite the domain name, isn't the sole BLM organization); among the groups at odds with BLMGNF are either a substantial minority or perhaps even an actual majority of the former local chapters, BLMGNF has apparently been leaderless for most of a year after failing to reach a deal with the two people that were supposed to take over last May as coleads to replace the outgoing executive director.
I can't help but feel like non-profits who name themselves after decentralized movements are often a grift. They count on people not knowing the difference and giving them money to support a cause they may or may not actually contribute to.
I should point out that this isn't universally true, the woman who set up the initial "Woman's March" event on Facebook, Teresa Shook, founded an organization of the same name, so there is some legitimacy to that org's claim there.
Important to note that this is the BLM Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF), which is not the same as the grassroots, decentralized BLM movement that happened nationally.
If I recall correctly, BLMGNF was formed by a couple folks in Los Angeles to give a formal organization the authority and organizational weight of what the BLM movement was about. The BLM movement, being decentralized and leaderless at the national level, mostly rejected BLMGNF speaking for them and being recognized as the organization of the movement, but BLMGNF moved forward with claiming national leadership regardless.
If they're not 'the real blm' then where is the funding from? I don't heard of donators complaining to have been defrauded, only claims that it's racist to criticize blm for actions by the organization with all the money..
Indeed. Every single time there's some alleged BLM scandal (and there seems to be many), there is someone who assures us that it's not the "real" BLM, but the "national organization"/"local organization"/"someone using the BLM name". It's "fake" BLMs all the way down, seemingly.
tl;dr: BLM Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) hasn't disclosed where donations have been going and is out of compliance with various state's rules for non-profits. Amazon suspended donations to BLMGNF until the compliance issue is resolved.
I feel like the corps are rapidly cutting ties with BLM after the Kentucky event: no business wants to be dragged into the upcoming investigation as a financisl donor to the org.
So, I figure I may as well ask what blacklivesmatter.com[0] is? I was wondering if that website was anything to do with this scam organisation, but came away even more confused. They don't have a mailing address, any organisation (e.g. Black Lives Matter Foundation) naming / references on the website, or... anything, really.
Where does the money go from this website? Does it go to a grassroots organisation, or are these another group of bandits?
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadhttps://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/detailsPage?ein=473691474&name=...
Amazon doesn't really get a choice in the matter here.
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/black-lives-mat...
Corporations are more concerned about the signal donating money sends than the actual effectiveness of the receiving organization. Did Amazon independently donate any money to this organization?
BLMGN was a small group running a big scam. It was mostly a sink for corporate "blackwashing" PR spend, as megacorps rushed to fake "doing something woke" in 2020.
Both hijacked the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter for profit.
Maybe there's a good reason for the disconnect, but two yrs running is not a good sign.
How could they be so gullible?
https://twitter.com/Sean_Kev/status/1488195035418013701
(article linked in that tweet)
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/01/black-lives-matter-f...
There's basically zero desire to actually really work on any problem that isn't related to their stock portfolio, so they jump at it and post some PR and then they're done.
Happens time and time again, more or less legit depending. Look up donations to environmental groups whilst the business doesn't change much if anything about what they do.
I don't think you aren't an American if you aren't a supporter of democracy, per se, but I do think the principle is a fairly core tenet of what it is, or at least is supposed to be, to be "American". I would be unsurprised if other people said you were un-American for feeling this way.
The Founders took great pains to LIMIT the amount of democracy in our system, because they understood the problems with democracy. The house of Representatives was the only democratically elected part of the government for a reason. We ignored them at our own peril..
No one said racism or slavery until you did.
If you want to die on the hill, come up with a rebuttal, like why you think black and female humans should not have voting rights
hmmm
>like why you think black and female humans should not have voting rights
So you subtle call me a racist, but no one mentioned it? Really.....
No where in any comments ever have a stated or implied support for that. Understanding history, understanding the context of the decisions and no applying modern ethical standards to history is a proper way to learn from history
Viewing history with a modern ethical lens like so many people are today destines you to never understanding history and thus never learning from it.
-The post you replied to did not contain the word racism
-The post was calling into question the exclusion of certain classes of humanoids from the framework of rights agreed on at birth of US
-No commenter said the words "you are racist"
-You failed to offer why the exclusion of black or female people is just
In “Notes on the State of Virginia,” Jefferson wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever…” He believed that to keep slaves in bondage, with part of America in favor of abolition and part of America in favor of perpetuating slavery, would result in civil war. Jefferson’s prediction was correct: in 1861, the contest over slavery sparked a bloody civil war and the creation of two nations — Union and Confederacy — in the place of one.
Read up on natural law
This is democracy. You cannot have self-governance without democracy. If not everyone is enfranchised, not everyone has self-governance. You can quibble about representative democracy, but it's still democracy at its core.
Now yes, as the other poster mentions, many of the tenets of the founders' approach to representative democracy were intended to limit political participation by people who were not white, male, and landowners. Thankfully, many of those policies [edit: have since been changed].
> The house of Representatives was the only democratically elected part of the government for a reason. We ignored them at our own peril..
Keep in mind that by the definition you're using here, there's a solid argument to make that neither the US senate nor the US presidential elections are "democratic" today due to the inherent undemocratic nature of the electoral college and differing vote values of residents of different states. So this is still the case, and perhaps you've misidentified the problem.
(I always wonder why we deify a bunch of mostly 30 year olds from 270 years ago as though they had the perfect ideas about government and we haven't learned anything in the intervening centuries)
How exactly do you figure? I'm looking at women's suffrage in 1920, Reconstruction era and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and North Carolina's property requirement removal in 1856 and I'm not sure if our ideas of short-lived are similar.
So like I think its probably most precise to say that they were usually long-lived, but not universally. I'll reword my prior comment but leave this here.
Slavery was terrible, but when people look at history I have often had people point to the 3/5's clause in the constitution as an example of racism. They don't understand that is was the abolitionist that fought for that, the slave owners wanted all slaves to be counted as whole persons, it would have given them more power and likely could have resulted in slavery lasting longer.
You never learn that the original draft of the Declaration Condemned slavery as one of the crimes committed by the King, Jefferson writing "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him". no documented reason has been given for why that was removed but most believe it was because of just 2 colonies, South Carolina and Georgia.
To paint history with a modern lens destines you to never understanding and thus never learning from it.
>>keep in mind that by the definition you're using here, there's a solid argument to make that neither the US senate nor the US presidential elections are "democratic"
The Senate should not be voted on at all IMO, I think that 17th Amendment has been a net negative for the nation. It has take the voice of the states out of the Federal government and has lead to a HUGE consolidation of power, elimination of checks in the system, and over all been bad for the republic.
As far as the electoral college, and democracy, if you support federalism, and believe the in the Idea of 50 United States coming together for the common economic and defensive goals then the electoral college is very democratic, however if you are a supporter of "America" where by the States are not really independent and to be treated as sub servant vassals of the Federal government then you would view it as non-democratic.
Given the US Constitution allows for the States to come together to overrule the federal government or even abolish it I would say we are a collection of 50 States united under a common set of laws and principles, i.e the United States of America.
>>I always wonder why we deify a bunch of mostly 30 year olds from 270 years ago as though they had the perfect ideas about government
I dont really think I have done that here, nor do I normally, Infact I am huge believer in the statement of "The US Constitution has either authorized the government we now have, or has been powerless to prevent it, in either case it is unfit to exist"
I have massive problems with the US Constitution but I highly doubt we are going to agree with what those problems are, as my problem with the US Constitution is it has given TOO MUCH power to government, has allowed for massive "interpretation" of the text to all the federal government do just about anything it wants.
I want a VERY VERY VERY small limited "night watchmen" like government, not this large overarching parental government that we look to for the solution to every problem in our lives
I look back to the original constitution, you see racism and an attempt put white men in power, I see a set of principles for limited government that would start the world down the path of the greatest expansion of Individual freedom in world history. Of course the US Constitution did not exist in a vacuum, and was not the sole reason for this expansion, but it was part of it.
I wish they would have had the ability to get more individual freedoms for everyone into our founding (many tried) I wish we would have more limited on governmental power, but I also understand the political realities of the day.
In the 200+ years since we have done alot of good things to advance those principles and expand individual freedom, some things too longer than they should ha...
You absolutely can though. There aren't really problems with it. The problems you describe aren't problems with the ethical lens you look at history with. They're just historical facts that I guess you thought I didn't know. As for "anything good about history" I'm not really sure what you mean. History is amoral. It isn't good or bad, it just is. I think it's good to analyze it through a wide variety of lenses. Analyzing actions both via modern and contemporary lenses makes sense, both have value!
> Slavery was terrible, but when people look at history I have often had people point to the 3/5's clause in the constitution as an example of racism. They don't understand that is was the abolitionist that fought for that, the slave owners wanted all slaves to be counted as whole persons, it would have given them more power and likely could have resulted in slavery lasting longer.
Right so to rephrase this: neither the north nor the south consider black people worthy of citizenship/personhood. Both (and admittedly primarily the south) were willing to use them as a political football anyhow though. Like the north's position here isn't noble or anything. It's all bad. Its an interesting historical fact, yes, but there's no ethical lesson to be found.
> You never learn that the original draft of the Declaration Condemned slavery as one of the crimes committed by the King, Jefferson writing "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him".
I mean but you still do learn this. Nothing stops you. It just again, isn't noble. It's perhaps worse? The colonists had no excuse. They knew slavery was monstrous and yet the allowed their new nation to be founded with it, and kicked the can down the road (Article 1, Section 9).
Like do you not find it terribly hypocritical to use this as one of the intended reasons to declare independence, and then turn around and do it yourself immediately? Like judging Jefferson by Jefferson's own ethics, he was "violating [human nature's] most sacred rights of life & liberty".
> The Senate should not be voted on at all IMO, I think that 17th Amendment has been a net negative for the nation.
Sure, yeah, even if we assume that's true (I think the federal system is fairly problematic, but let's pretend it's not), the rampant fraud in senate appointments wasn't great.
> has allowed for massive "interpretation"
I agree with you here. Comparing the US constitution to any modern European constitution and for example one thing we've learned is that a constitution should be written with precision, not in vague flowery language.
> I look back to the original constitution, you see racism and an attempt put white men in power, I see a set of principles for limited government that would start the world down the path of the greatest expansion of Individual freedom in world history.
I see both, but by your own admission it failed at getting you limited government, and the racism is still around.
Because it is.
> They don't understand that is was the abolitionist that fought for that
No, they didn't.
Abolitionists fought for...abolition. But there weren't many around among the Framers.
People who were neither slavers nor politically allied with them (but also not abolitionists in any substantial sense fought for slaves not to count for apportionment.
> the slave owners wanted all slaves to be counted as whole persons,
That's true, but no one fought for the 3/5 compromise. That’s why it's called a “compromise”. And it's closer to the position of the racist slaveholders than that of the also racist, but less so, people who were fine with slavery existing but against giving extra votes to slaveholders (by exactly the degree that 3/5 is closer to 1 than 0.)
Splitting the difference between racist, slavery accepting factions, in a way which favors the more racist one is, well, pretty racist.
Likewise, if I said I donated to BLM, odds are good I am talking about the fund by that name, not an abstract concept of a movement that random people ephemerally belong to.
I'm not a democrat and I'm American.
I know, I know... some people cringe when someone points this out, but it's true.
I'm not inclined to participate in an argument about it here, but there are valid points of view other than the one you assert.
What are you referring to? Also, you can home-school your kids. Or just move someplace where nobody cares.
It's not perfect, but name something that gives you remotely as much freedom and power over your government.
Many millions have given their lives, physically or temporally, to making it better, to give you and I the historically unequalled freedom, security, and prosperity we were born into. If you see problems - and so do I - how about helping make it better rather than sitting around criticizing while others do the work?
> Voting doesn't scale well
It's scaled amazingly well, far beyond what the creators could have imagined. Billions vote around the world. In the US, without looking up the population in 1776, it's probably scaled 100x.
And it's been, by far, the most successful, free, prosperous, stable, functional form of government in human history. Name any that comes close - any country that has come close in history that isn't a democracy. Name a better form of government, or a country in any time and place that people would prefer to live in. Note the massive migration to democracies. It's like citing Apple Computer as a company that doesn't scale well (except there are other companies in Apple's league, and no other form of government competes with democracy).
The only question is, who is so anxious to tear it down and why?
Is there a reasonable solution to these problems? I feel like without the popularity contest element, that's only more delegating to those who don't necessarily vote the way people would want. Without the delegating, there is stronger requirements on a citizen to educate themselves.
Representative democracy seems to be at the rough point of compromise between these downsides.
edit:formatting
One idea is community level dictatorships where people can freely create, fork, join, and leave these communities.
As an example: M4A has strong bipartisan support among the public, but politicians discuss it using rhetoric and propaganda, demonstrating that it is fake.
Just as Republicans don't claim to be democrats, defund the police means removing all funding for police, etc.
The point though, is that most people who support ending police brutality know that BLM Global Network Foundation is mismanaged. There are many other groups doing work to fight against police brutality which have more support from people involved in that movement.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(No, this is not a comment about policing. This is a comment about having an internet forum that doesn't burn itself to a crisp. If possible.)
They supported both, including the 'Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation'.
So they were supporting fraudsters all this time?
In general, there are no trademarks on social movements, and it's a tough problem.
It’s not missing, it's the money they reportedly had on hand at last account.
(And if anyone knew it had been spent on properties, it still wouldn't be missing.)
Exactly. Everyone knows that the 'missing' $60M didn't go to their own causes, but was spent on themselves (and everything else unrelated to BLM), just like what fraudsters would do. They were successful at manipulating the emotions of their supporters and executed a magnificent scam that even tricked the largest of companies.
So we are still defending fraudsters?
No, they don't, that's rather the basis of the (still inaccurate) characterization of it being missing.
It's more different than that between the BLM movement and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation organization (which, despite the domain name, isn't the sole BLM organization); among the groups at odds with BLMGNF are either a substantial minority or perhaps even an actual majority of the former local chapters, BLMGNF has apparently been leaderless for most of a year after failing to reach a deal with the two people that were supposed to take over last May as coleads to replace the outgoing executive director.
I should point out that this isn't universally true, the woman who set up the initial "Woman's March" event on Facebook, Teresa Shook, founded an organization of the same name, so there is some legitimacy to that org's claim there.
If I recall correctly, BLMGNF was formed by a couple folks in Los Angeles to give a formal organization the authority and organizational weight of what the BLM movement was about. The BLM movement, being decentralized and leaderless at the national level, mostly rejected BLMGNF speaking for them and being recognized as the organization of the movement, but BLMGNF moved forward with claiming national leadership regardless.
For any good press, plenty of people stepping forward for credit.
Where does the money go from this website? Does it go to a grassroots organisation, or are these another group of bandits?
I would be curious to know more.
[0]: https://blacklivesmatter.com/