From: Steve Dossick (sdossick@electricpal.com)
Date: Sun Jan 23 2000 - 21:33:34 PST
I bet the problem is that Rohit doesn't know how to install majordomo.
:)
-s
Dan Kohn wrote:
> This is exactly why I normally replace the main Fork address with Kragen's
> alias. Rohit, this sort of thing -- which I've been complaining about for
> *years* -- really pisses me off. Install majordomo!
>
> - dan
> --
> Daniel Kohn <mailto:dan@dankohn.com>
> tel:+1-425-602-6222 fax:+1-425-602-6223
> http://www.dankohn.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
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> Sent: Sunday, 2000-01-23 19:58
> To: dan@teledesic.com
> Subject: Returned mail: unknown mailer error 255
>
> The original message was received at Sun, 23 Jan 2000 19:47:33 -0800 (PST)
> from [216.190.22.34]
>
> ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
> "|/usr/local/bin/hypermail -i -u -d /usr/www/public/FoRK-archive/current/ -l
> \"FoRK Archive\" -a /FoRK-archive/ -M -t -L en"
> (expanded from: FoRK-hyperarchive)
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> ----- Transcript of session follows -----
> hypermail: Could not write "/usr/www/public/FoRK-archive/current/date.html".
> 554 "|/usr/local/bin/hypermail -i -u -d
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> dab@organicmachines.com... Deferred: Name server: megspo.megsinet.net.: host
> name lookup failure
>
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> ATT78264.TXT Type: Plain Text (text/plain)
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> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject: RE: Thomas Sowell on The conferderate flag in SC
> Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 19:37:39 -0800
> From: Dan Kohn <dan@teledesic.com>
>
> Interesting viewpoint, but I completely disagree.
>
> >Any association of human beings -- from a
> >marriage to a nation -- involves putting up with
> >things we would rather not be bothered with.
> >Only children insist that everything must be done
> >their way.
>
> This week's Economist has an essay making a connection I hadn't seen before,
> which ties the debate about the confederate flag to issues of respecting
> minority rights in other parts of the world. It really comes down to a
> question of political leadership, and on this, the South Carolina
> legislature (and the Republican presidential candidates) are failing
> miserably. I should probably state my biases before I continue: I'm white,
> I grew up in South Carolina, and I fought on neither side of the War of
> Northern Aggression. However, just as "only children insist that everything
> must be done their way", adults understand that compromise is one of the
> keys to civilizations.
>
> <http://www.economist.com/editorial/justforyou/current/index_us5732.html>:
>
> The bitterness of the arguments is a reminder that America’s historical
> experience still shapes the country in a more powerful way than most
> Americans like to think. People pride themselves on being open to new ideas.
> History is bunk. The Internet changes everything. Yet such attitudes form
> only part of the overall national picture. Elsewhere, history still matters,
> for good and ill.... And in South Carolina, while supporters of the flag
> talked of the state’s distinctive history, the protestors carried banners
> saying: “Your heritage is my slavery”. This is, in large part, an argument
> about the past.
>
> Of the historical experiences shaping America, slavery still lurks most
> poisonously in the bloodstream. Of course, that partly reflects the enormity
> of the system itself and the scale of the conflict that ended it: the Civil
> War (which began in South Carolina) was the first modern war.
>
> But it also reflects a failure of political leadership over many years.
> Other countries—notably Germany—have come to terms with yet worse horrors in
> a far shorter time. They have done so partly because leaders have moved the
> country away from the poisonous parts of its history. When Americans look at
> conflicts abroad—in South Africa, say, or Northern Ireland, or Kosovo and
> Bosnia—they expect the same thing. They want to see national leaders cajole
> and persuade reluctant populations towards reconciliation. And when the
> elites start talking about “heritage”, or cultural particularism, this is
> impatiently recognised for what it is: code for damaging nostalgia or
> cultural divisiveness.
>
> By this standard, therefore, the reaction of the local South Carolina
> legislators is disappointing, but perhaps not surprising. They started
> flying the Confederate Southern Cross not in 1860, when the state seceded
> from the union, but in 1962, as a reaction to the civil-rights legislation
> of the time. So their current attachment to it smacks more of nostalgia—and
> deliberate defiance of black feelings—than the inescapable clutches of
> history. But they are the local leaders, and have the last say.
>
> The bigger failure has been on the part of the national ones, especially the
> Republican front-runners. (Both Democratic candidates said the flag should
> come down; so did Bill Clinton.) George W. Bush, the governor of Texas,
> refused to take sides in the dispute, arguing that it was just a local
> issue, like some state zoning law. This was fairly unconvincing to begin
> with. It was compounded because Mr Bush has not hesitated to express his
> opinions about other state disputes which seem just as local, such as the
> decision by the Vermont Supreme Court to recognise gay marriage at the end
> of last year (he’s against that). “Compassionate conservatism” now seems
> consistent with the Confederate flag.
>
> - dan
> --
> Daniel Kohn <mailto:dan@dankohn.com>
> tel:+1-425-602-6222 fax:+1-425-602-6223
> http://www.dankohn.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Boyer [mailto:johnboy@johnboy.to]
> Sent: Sunday, 2000-01-23 17:01
> To: FORK
> Cc: thanh
> Subject: Thomas Sowell on The conferderate flag in SC
>
> Thomas Sowell's latest column, in which he takes up the issue of the
> confederate flag. Once again he shows that he is one of America's most
> valuable intellectual assets. Well, that's my opinion anyway.
> Here is the best quote...
> "Over the past hundred years or so, black leadership in
> general has gone from the likes of Frederick Douglass to the likes of Al
> Sharpton -- and that has not been up."
> --johnboy
>
> http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell1.asp
> LAWRENCE OTIS GRAHAM is the author of
> a book about the black elite titled, "Our Kind of
> People." He is also one of them. However, at
> his formal wedding reception with 260 guests,
> he and his bride jumped over a broom.
>
> This was an old custom from the days of the
> slave plantations, when of course there was no
> legal marriage for blacks. This action signified to
> all on the plantation that the couple were to be
> considered married.
>
> Why such a ceremony on Manhattan's posh
> upper east side today? Because it "paid homage
> to our slave ancestors," Graham said. If that's
> what he wanted to do, so be it. But no one in
> his right mind would think that this was some
> sort of endorsement of slavery.
>
> We also have to recognize that white people in
> the South had ancestors as well. Some of them
> want to pay them homage -- and they do it with
> the Confederate flag, which is as much a part of
> the long gone past as jumping over a broom.
>
> Personally, as a black man, I am not thrilled at
> the sight of a Confederate flag. On the other
> hand, I am not thrilled at the sight of
> professional wrestling or Alan Alda, but I don't
> demand that they be banned.
>
> Any association of human beings -- from a
> marriage to a nation -- involves putting up with
> things we would rather not be bothered with.
> Only children insist that everything must be done
> their way.
>
> If the current campaign to get the Confederate
> flag off the state capitol in South Carolina were
> just an isolated controversy, it might not mean
> much.
>
> But it is part of a much bigger trend of
> constantly scavenging for grievances.
>
> There was a time when very real and very big
> grievances hit black people from all sides. You
> didn't have to look for them. You didn't have to
> do historical research or put people's statements
> under a microscope to see what they "really"
> meant.
>
> Ask yourself: Who do you know personally
> who has benefited from having a chip on his
> shoulder? Chances are you are more likely to
> know someone who has messed himself up, in
> any number of ways, by going around with a chip on his shoulder.
>
> Unfortunately, it has become very fashionable, and even lucrative, to
> encourage various groups to feel victimized and to go scavenging through
> history for grievances. Nothing is easier to find than sin among human
> beings, past and present, black and white and all
> the other colors of the rainbow.
>
> If you want to spend your time and energy on
> this kind of project, just be aware that there are
> all sorts of other things on which you could be
> spending that time and energy. Admittedly, if you
> are a politician or a leader of some movement,
> this may be where your biggest payoff will come.
>
> But it is not where the biggest payoff will come
> for those who listen to you.
>
> In a global economy, where the Internet is truly a worldwide web, you
> can engage in transactions with people on every continent who neither
> know nor care what you look like, much less who your ancestors were.
> In this environment, to burden the younger generation of blacks or other
> minorities with the grievance mentality is to sell their birthright for a
> mess
> of pottage -- or for money and power for race hustlers.
>
> There was a time when the civil rights organizations had a very important
> role to play and when they had leaders of a much higher caliber than
> those seen today. Over the past hundred years or so, black leadership in
> general has gone from the likes of Frederick Douglass to the likes of Al
> Sharpton -- and that has not been up.
>
> In a sense, this too is a consequence of the rise of blacks and of the
> country in general. At a time when blacks were being lynched at a rate of
> two or three per week, there was a literally life and death need for the
> best people in the black community to do whatever they could to turn the
> tide.
>
> If blacks were still being lynched today, no doubt many a black Wall
> Street lawyer or black Silicon Valley entrepreneur would be in the civil
> rights movement instead, bending his efforts toward saving lives instead
> of making money. But that has long since ceased to be the situation, so
> racial "leadership" now falls to the second-raters and the demagogues.
>
> If the current civil rights establishment has any worthwhile role left to
> play, it will probably be by making more and more Americans sick of
> hearing about race, and therefore more and more inclined to judge each
> person as an individual.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jan 23 2000 - 21:34:58 PST