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So you want someone to prove a negative for you?
Perhaps you should reread the OP? Chesterton did not ask anyone to prove anything.
He asked for a quote from someone prominent in BLM stating that BLM has nothing to do with Marxism.
-sigh-
When one says "prove a negative" it is not always in the sense of a mathematical "proof". It is any time when someone requires that something be provided that is an establishment of the LACK of existence of something else.
For instance: I'm an atheist. Ergo I don't have the belief in God. BUT at no point would I ever support the claim "There is no God" precisely because that is "proving a negative". There may very well be a God but he just hasn't been found.
In this case it is no more the burden of the folks in BLM to clearly state "We are not a Marxist organization" than it is for them to say "We in BLM do NOT condone the use of mayonnaise on french fries".
I must disagree. The people themselves may claim to be "Marxists" but the organization isn't Marxist per se. That difference may seem overly pendantic and subtle but it is key to this debate.
But I generally agree that a better tactic would be to eliminate the overt negativity to the term, but it has such a "history" among American Conservatives that at this point it will only be leveraged as an attack.
The easier route is to simply point out that the organization qua BLM is not, itself, expressly Marxist.
For instance: I'm an atheist. Ergo I don't have the belief in God. BUT at no point would I ever support the claim "There is no God" precisely because that is "proving a negative". There may very well be a God but he just hasn't been found.
But is one NOT allowed to label themselves as they see fit?
...are you going to now replay for us the entire history of how Marxism was utilized to ultimately wind up with a Stalinist Dictatorship? You may as well tell us how Christianity wound up being the home of people who murder doctors or tell people at funerals their loved ones are going to hell or who tortured countless Jews in the Pogroms.
Ideologies are just that: ideologies. They can be hijacked and warped and extrapolated to extremes. If you can find something within the actual BLM STATEMENTS that is troubling, lay those out rather than simply tossing "Marxism" at it like it's some sort of ipso facto "EEEEEEVIL".
I'm an existential nihilist. Do you think I can put together the slides I'm supposed to present to management next week?
But do you really believe you're ever going to convince a conservative who has seen leaders of BLM call themselves Marxists that the organization is not itself Marxist as well?
I'm not really sure it even matters, since the organization itself is definitely based in critical race theory, and therefore fairly neo-Marxist. I think the best idea might be to just ignore it and find more conservative voices who still talk about racial issues. Which shouldn't be hard, since very nearly everyone is more conservative than them.
Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. With respect to the universe, existential nihilism suggests that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose and unlikely to change in the totality of existence.
What just a bunch of blobs passing through time?
Little point in anything when it comes to nihilism. comes over as Philosophy for philosophy's sake for the most part.
this is disturbing .... atheist or not
existential nihilism suggests that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant ...
Why worry, most Nihilists are crackpots anyway.
Given the way communities of color are over-policed, I would very much suspect that they actually are being targeted disproportionately for marijuana possession.
A month and a half into protests and I still can't believe comments like this are cropping up.
Selective policing takes place in many places. Often white kids/people aren't stopped at all, and if they are stopped any drugs they have are confiscated and they are sent on their way, or they are just sent on their way.
When doing stop and frisk in NY, a higher percentage of whites had illegal substances when frisked, but they weren't the ones being targeted. In some areas the percentage of black people stopped and frisk was above their percentage in that areas population, because it was being used as a means of harassment and back citizens were being stopped multiple times.
Not to mention legal representation. A white person with a lawyer is going to gain freedom far more often than a black person without one or with a public defender. White kids are also seen as needing guidance while black kids are seen as needing to be controlled and to have an example made out of them. This results in less dismissals, harsher judgements etc, just like with school discipline. Collective thinking is that black behavioral problems are an inherent character flaw, white behavioral problems are just a phase of which they will outgrow.
People don't consider even weapon wielding, wildly aggressive white folks to be a threat.
ACLU had a report they did a few years ago. The PDF is online. Google Selective Policing: Racially Disparate Enforcement of Low-Level Offenses in New Jersey.
If neighborhood A has 500 crimes a day and neighborhood B has 25 crimes a day how could you police each equally? Should they just stop enforcement in neighborhood A to keep things equal? The attention will always be on high crime neighborhoods first. It's not color it's the amount of crime that draws police attention.
Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. With respect to the universe, existential nihilism suggests that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose and unlikely to change in the totality of existence.
What just a bunch of blobs passing through time?
Why worry, most Nihilists are crackpots anyway.
this is disturbing .... atheist or not
existential nihilism suggests that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant ...
I don't see why that is so disturbing. Remember: in the big picture.
But look at this thread: I'm for people working to help others lives be better. Not because I think that is my "reason" for being. It is just that we are all on this single speck of rock in the middle of nearly impossible vastness of space and time and ultimately none of it is "necessary". I am not here because some force in the universe decreed "There must be an on earth in the late 20th, early 21st century such that the entire timeline going forward is made possible!"
But while I'm here, knowing that I will not be remembered 20 years after I die, I want to be part of the solutions, not part of the problems.
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