Opening the old email bag with shaking hands (nyah, just sick) revealed this bit of trash:
72 years later!
THE 5 STATEMENTS AT THE END SAY IT ALL!
—————————— ————–What happened to the radiation that’s
supposed to lasts thousands of years?
This isn’t really relevant, but HuffPo treated this question here.
HIROSHIMA (1945)
We all know that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed
in August 1945 after the explosion of atomic bombs.However, we know very little about the progress made
by the people of that land during the past 72 years.HIROSHIMA – 72 YEARS LATER
DETROIT – 72 YEARS AFTER HIROSHIMA
What has caused more long term destruction –
The A-bomb,Or
Government welfare programs created to buy the
votes of those who want someone to take care of them?Japan does not have a welfare system.
( READ THIS SENTENCE AGAIN AND ASK, ‘WHY NOT?’ )Work for it or do without.
These are possibly the 5 best statements you’ll ever read and
all applicable to this social experiment:1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.
Can you think of a reason for not sharing this?
Neither could I . .
I’ll just stipulate the pictures because I’m sick and tired and not very good at tracking down picture provenances. And they are not the issue here, of course. The author of this bit of trash is frantic to push out a bit of conservative kant (it has a small helping of libertarianism in it as well), but he’s really on slippery ground right the get-go. The situation in Japan, which was the recipient of massive American aid in response to the start of the Cold War for both tactical and strategic reasons, as well as having an extremely cohesive population. This is far different from Detroit, which has had poor leadership over the decades, a leadership that often depended on the new big plant by one of the automakers to advance its fortunes. When they decided to move away, the lack of alternative commerce was a real problem.
And then, of course, came the Great Recession.
But here’s the kicker, the thing I look for in these emails that swim the conservative bloodstream:
The outright lie.
So what’s the lie du jour?
Japan does not have a welfare system.
Um, no. Sorry, maybe you can play again when you’ve learned the difference between a truth and a lie. From the The Japan Times:
Welfare system not faring well
BY PHILIP BRASOR
SEP 25, 2011Ten years ago, in her book “Nickel and Dimed,” Barbara Ehrenreich chronicled her own experience as a subsistence-level American wage-earner during a period of relative economic vigor. She found a whole class of workers who lived — and would always live — from paycheck to paycheck. In the afterword to the recently published tenth-anniversary edition of the book, Ehrenreich says that in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, these people now have to compete for minimum-wage jobs. Ever since President Bill Clinton overhauled the welfare system, many poor Americans no longer qualify for assistance, which means they have nothing to fall back on. The “safety net” has turned into a “dragnet,” since, in line with the contraction of welfare eligibility, many state and municipal governments have effectively “criminalized homelessness.”
In spirit, Japan’s public welfare system is closer to America’s than it is to Europe’s. Citizens do not have a right to be supported by the government. Some claim they do and as proof point to Article 25 of the Constitution, which states that all people have the right to “maintain the minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living.” But Article 27 states that people have the right “and the obligation” to work. What this means in practice is that a person who applies for welfare must pass a rigorous screening process that can include personal disclosures, such as whether or not the applicant has access to support from a relative or even a lover. The applicant has to conform to certain notions of impoverishment. I’ve heard that in the 1960s and 70s, potential welfare recipients would hide “inessential” possessions like color TVs when a case worker visited.
Differences, obviously, inevitably. But welfare.
And this isn’t some minor mistake, which I would forgive. This is the pivot on which this ghoul of a writer would invoke the demons of Hell on the souls of those poor folk who grew up poor, who were provided bad schools, ran into rampant racism, and vigilantism (fortunately, while not gone it has decreased greatly in virulence, but when you grow up with it, the intensity of today is less relevant than you might first assume – think PTSD, not to mention the economic damage already suffered).
In essence, this is bigotry, employed by someone who appears to really prefer to worship at the altar of his money rather than a more forgiving master who preaches brotherhood. This is a guy who doesn’t have the common good at heart. If he did, he’d be advocating for better schools.
But this is what the conservatives are being fed: thin ideological broth, thickened with lies.
