You see life as fundamentally unfair. I realize this truth, but see it as a moral imperative to make sure that life is as fair as possible for the greatest possible number of people.

What happened in the past informs the present. The past is not an excuse, but the past shaped the present directly. In order to have an equitable and just present where everyone is equally free, then we must acknowledge the past.

When a black man is followed around a shop incessantly because of subconscious fears that he may steal something, he is being made less free than his white peers. When a Hispanic American is paid less than a white American for the same labor and skills, he is being made less free. I am not talking about opportunity nor about demeaning the work that you have put in to building your own success, I am speaking about fundamental equity among all people of this nation and their accompanying equal freedoms.

I was simply trying to address the hypocritical bias you created when you put Rev. Wright’s face on a straw man argument and falsely called it truth by pointing out that Rev. Wright is no more extreme than the pastors who support McCain (yet McCain isn’t attacked for their support or affiliation) and to shed light into the context around his rather blunt indictments of the U.S.. You, however, have brought up the racially-coded argumentative trope of “I PAID FOR IT! THEY DIDN’T!”. And by proxy, you’ve also invoked affirmative action. As an aside, the government was most certainly bailing out your ancestors with great bailouts when it pursued Manifest Destiny and conquered the West from Savages.

Let me try to explain this:
It is true that everyone must pay taxes that go in to a pool that pay to provide basic infrastructure and public services and that everyone is entitled to the fruits of their taxes. It is also a current truth that certain demographic minorities rely on these services at a rate disproportionate to their total contribution, however, they are still citizens of this country and as such are guaranteed the support of their government. It would be rather quite un-democratic of us as a nation to decide that low-education, low-income rural white Americans no longer deserve Medicare assistance or foodstamps because they don’t pay as many gross taxes. We are a free country where everyone is at least equal on paper. Nonetheless, when African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans continue to suffer from disproportionately greater mortality and morbidity regardless of cause, lower net life income despite education, and greater rates of incarceration even when crime per capita is controlled for (just to name a few), there exist undeniable systemic inequalities in American society. These inequalities are the remaining echoes of past overt racism and they continue to affect people greatly even today. Affirmative action and social programs are not ideal solutions, but they are the best Band-Aids we have. Ideally in a free society, everyone would be judged and rewarded solely on the basis of the work they have done, yet study after study has shown that a black American with an ethnic name is much less likely to get a job than a white American with a white name even when experience and education are controlled for. These truths are uncomfortable because we now like to pretend that the 48 years since the Civil Rights Amendment was passed have healed everything. These truths force us to acknowledge that maybe the American dream isn’t as all-encompassing or inclusive as we thought. But it’s true, so please stop wasting your time with petty tropes and acknowledge it. Perhaps then we can all move towards a more just society.

None of your hard-earned money has paid for the invasion of Iraq – yet. That $600 billion present (and growing by $10 billion a month) is all on the country’s credit card, mostly borrowed from China. Now let me think, who holds the power: the person borrowing or the bank lending?