Eolufemi's Blog

Your counter-argument reflects an obsolete rationale that presupposes that the security of nations is only threatened by opposing nations with armies of men bent on its destruction. We now understand the role disease, social factors, and economics play in the very success or failure of a nation. So the founding fathers were wise to not only mandate that we organize a common defense but we also organize to promote the general welfare of the people. I think it stands to reason that protecting the public's health falls under the rubric of promoting the general welfare of the nation. Especially, considering the leading causes of premature loss of American life have NOTHING to do with foreign armies or terrorist but rather preventable diseases. You say that these diseases are simply a matter of personal choice. However, this supposition is also another example of an outdated understanding of the world around us. No social problem is "simply" anything. The spread of disease and premature death is a combination of behavioral, structural, economic and cultural factors. No individual is so empowered as to be able effectively respond to each of those factors on their own. Therefore it requires collective and organized effort on the parts of multiple institutions that pillar our society, including governmental institutions. All of which acting in concert to create contexts in which individuals are both likely and have the ability to act in their best interests. Without this understanding and the promotion of the general welfare (i.e. the creation of public health departments, the CDC, medicaid, medicare, the AFDA, etc.) we would not have enjoyed the steady improvement in health outcomes for the American people over the past 200 years. And of course all of this activity costs something. It requires resources. Unfortunately, we've taken for granted the fact that we are a nation that does not regularly face cholera outbreaks or have fear of lead poisoning, so we dismiss the invisible victories that result from our prevention and intervention efforts. We have a callous disregard for the role these efforts play in our quality of life. So we honestly say death is assured for all despite the fact most sane people would prefer not to die prematurely from preventable causes. I am offering the simple observation that our allocation of resources to fight terrorism was born off the back of being awakened to the both dramatic and unnecessary loss of life to terrorism on 9-11. That's how we are as a people, we don't appreciate our lives until they are stolen from us in some dramatic fashion. Well, we're facing another dramatic and unnecessary loss of life in the coming months due to H1N1, which will strike and fester within the poor and insured first and then spread to the rest of us despite our "responsible" individual behavior. And at that point, I feel that we are finally going to wake up to the fact that we are not giving the health of the public enough consideration, effort, or resources to combat disease and premature death, while we waste resources on military conflicts with no measurable benefit to the American people. If the government has to prove how it is helping the American people by improving health care, it's not unreasonable to expect the government to prove how it is helping the American people by attacking other nations.

I love that song. Classic wu-tang material. As far as hiphop goes thats probably one of the deepest questions ever posed and GZA deserves props for posing it.

Fast forward a decade or so and i feel like I'm faced with this question everyday.

I got a dissertation to write. The subject of course is crime. Who commits it and who doesn't? And better yet what do we do about it, without dragging even more black folk into the system?

Now this is a tough question to tackle from my vantage point because I am an american african in an education system run by euros. Worse I'm not just trying to answer the question, im tryin to put legs behind the words and actually reform the system in my community whilst pontificating in such a way these "good white folk" see fit to hand over my credentials.

and it seems that a lot of topics pertaining to my dissertation keep coming up. here we had the jena 6 ordeal, michael vick plea and most recently OJ getting arrested for armed robbery.

got to say it saddens me the lengths to which the government will go to use the legal system against us.or rather it saddens me how we allow the government to use the legal system against us.

and im not talking about the accussed. im talking about the innocent mothafuckas out there that keep justifying how the government mistreats us. whether it be by blaming folks for getting caught or "giving the government an excuse".

you see it doesnt matter whether the JENA 6 were wrong in beating up that white boy. Nor does it matter whether it was wrong for vick to kill those dogs. or whether OJ should have called the cops first. the fact of the matter is the government should NOT be allowed to overcharge or sentence us to longer periods of incarceration than are the norm for the offenses we commit.

when that duke prosecutor went after that lacross team for raping that girl, the white community was so outraged by what they perceived as overzealous prosecution, they forced the BAR in his state to take away his license. Not to mention he was criminally charged and convicted. But when do we react like this to overzealous prosecution. We typically tuck our heads between our legs and blame each other for falling victim to the system.

By taking this cowardly approach, we are only enabling systems to further destroy us. while i frankly think we should take over governance of our communities, I realize that the vast majorityof us are completely dependent on whites and just cant perceive a day where we had that type of power. So if we are going to stay within the system the very least we should do is fight for our rights within that system. Lets stop being so weak. Lets turn this JENA 6 thing into something greater than an isolated moment where we came together and forced the systems hand. We have the power and the JENA 6 case proved that.