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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.social,net.women,net.flame
Subject: Re: Discrimination and Affirmative Action
Message-ID: <557@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-May-85 13:34:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.557
Posted: Thu May 30 13:34:38 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Jun-85 12:55:11 EDT
References: <566@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> <197@weitek.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
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In article <197@weitek.UUCP> robertp@weitek.UUCP (Robert Plamondon) writes:
> 
> Well, the Irish and the Jews have pretty much overcome prejudices against
> them without government aid.  I'm always irritated by the presumption that
> today's minorities are too incompetent to do the same.

Well, I'm irritated by your presumption that new minorities should have to
be initiated by running a gauntlet of prejudice and discrimination.

> For that matter, the idea that government intrusion into people's lives
> would ever LESSEN resentment strikes me as absurd.  OSHA insists that
> they're regulating working conditions for the workers' own good, but have
> you ever heard a kind word about them? Why would you assume that regulation
> of YOUR causes would be less inept than other regulation?

The only people I've heard complain about OSHA are employers, largely
about the costs of complying.  By analogy, when's the last time you heard
a good thing said about vaccines by someone who didn't catch a disease?
But we do hear bad things said about vaccines by people who bear their costs:
occaisional bad reactions, or conflicts with religion.

> The nazis in Germany felt that the Jews had been oppressing them for
> centuries, and were excluding good Aryans from professional positions. So
> they set up government programs to restore the balance...

I see.  The Jewish majority decided they'd been oppressing the poor Nazis,
so they enacted genocidal lws against themselves and handed over the reigns
of government to the non-Jewish minority.  :-(

I'd be hard-put to make a weaker analogy than yours.
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh