An attack on 用户大叔 regarding the Philadelphia high school post

This is a map of Philadelphia\'s racial composition; red indicates Caucasian, green Hispanic, and blue African-American; a darkening indicates Asian and other trace concentrations. The more intense the color, the larger the percentage of that race; parts of south Philadelphia are 98% black. South Philadelphia High School is located in a whiter part of the region, but Caucasians are generally more affluent and able to send their children to better schools.

Providing Asian students with self-defense training ignores the actual problems and will solve very little. All it will do is ensure that fighting is more violent and brutal than it already is; note that the school is 70% black, and no amount of training will help the 18% who are Asian against that. Additionally, there is a mob mentality among the black students, who will retaliate in great numbers. Nothing will change until the school administration becomes more assertive and cracks down on the bigoted behavior of the xenophobic students. The principal as portrayed in the article is clearly incompetent, either incapable or unwilling to take decisive action, and absolutely nothing will improve until that changes.

It is unfair and misleading to attribute the misbehavior of the students to social welfare. The United States\' social programs are actually substantially smaller and less wide-ranging than those in most European countries. In any welfare system, there will be some people who take unfair advantage of it, but those people are few compared to those who legitimately benefit from such programs. If anything, welfare should be increased, because an increase in constructive opportunities and access to benefits corresponds with a decrease in the generally aimless attitude that spawns violent behavior.

Your comments about the divide between tax and other contributions of liberal and conservative states are patently spurious. Taking your state of New York as an example, there are plenty of affluent people who are also very liberal. Lower Manhattan, south of Harlem, is the wealthiest locale in the United States, and it consistently votes for Democrats by large margins. Even the extremely wealthy Upper East Side gave Barack Obama over 70% of the popular vote, and the area around Wall Street even more. These places are predominately Caucasian and contribute much of New York\'s tax burden. Indeed, the most conservative people in New York City tend to be Hasidic Jews, who often live below the poverty line due to their reckless reproduction. Precincts in Brooklyn consisting of Hasidic communities often gave John McCain more than 90% of the vote.

The suburbs of New York City also tend to be wealthy but liberal. Westchester County, just north of the city, voted 63% for Barack Obama and is the seventh wealthiest county in the United States. Even if we exclude the minority-rich cities of Yonkers, White Plains, and Mt. Vernon, the percentage hardly shifts, due to white and wealthy towns like Mamaroneck, Scarsdale, and Rye. The eastern suburbs of New York City of Nassau and Suffolk Counties are also very wealthy and somewhat more conservative, but again, the very wealthiest areas are predominately liberal. The towns of East Hampton and Southampton on the eastern end of Long Island, commonly known as playgrounds for the rich, voted 66% and 57% respectively for Barack Obama.

Of course, I do not deny that impoverished, minority-rich cities also constitute a very important bloc of the Democratic vote. This pattern is seen not only in New York City and Philadelphia, but in every city of substantial size, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and many others. However, the pattern of rich and liberal areas persists as well.

Portions of Delaware and Montgomery Counties near Philadelphia are very liberal and wealthy. Upper Darby Township in Delaware County is primarily white, and votes Democratic. Lower Merion Township in Montgomery County is also quite wealthy and votes even more Democratic, giving Barack Obama over 70% of the vote. Suburbs north of Chicago exhibit this pattern as well; towns like Schaumberg and New Trier are your typical rich suburbs, yet vote Democratic beyond the home-state effect that Obama brought. Cities like Malibu and Santa Monica in suburban Los Angeles follow suit. And north of Miami is a vast string of retirement locales in Palm Beach and Broward Counties that are extremely liberal. And it is not even necessary to mention the San Francisco Bay area, the most liberal region in the nation, and one of the richest, with Silicon Valley and cities like Danville, Atherton, Orinda, and Lafayette where median income approaches $200 000.

Certainly, there are many wealthy and conservative places, such as Forsyth County in suburban Atlanta and Montgomery County in suburban Houston. There are also many conservative areas that rely on federal subsidies, such as rural Nebraska and Kansas. This welfare comes in a different form, in the shape of farm subsidies, but is welfare nonetheless.

It is a perversion of the truth to state that conservatives shoulder a greater burden. There are many wealthy and many poor people on both sides, and neither one group is especially reliant on the other one; indeed, it would be more accurate to state that the wealthy liberals are the ones who support everyone else. It is a gross generalization, to be sure, but certainly less gross than the one you made.