Democrat and liberal policies have hurt the black community

Thank you for participating in what has been an engaging and thoughtful debate Here is the final summation of my argument. As a Canadian looking down across the border, I truly believe that the United States of America is one of the greatest, and freest places to live. That being said, the quality of life the majority of Americans has enjoyed has not reached all citizens. There is a group consistently at the bottom, and that group is African-Americans. In the modern era, much has been done to try compensate for the atrocity that is slavery. From the new deal, and the expansion of the welfare state, minimum wage laws and affirmative action, much has been done to try to alleviate African-American poverty. Despite these measures the black community has found themselves in a place of no hope. What is important to stress, is that the very things that have been tried to help them, namely the welfare state, minimum wage, affirmative action ect. Have had little too no affect if not making them worse off, and yet, all of these measures have been liberal policies. What con has tried, to great effect, is to redefine what it means to be a liberal. In his first argument he gave a lexical definition of liberal, and hence forth has picked and chosen the things he liked and deemed them liberal, and cherry picked the things he didn"t like and called them conservative. Unfortunately, in the land reality where it seems much of the left has never visited, lexical definitions have absolutely no correlation with results. For example, the lexical definition of communism is "a socioeconomic system characterized by the absence of social class, money, and the state." What appears to have been left out of this definition is the millions upon millions of people who died under leaders who ascribed to this vision. Likewise, when con says liberals are "favouring individual liberty, free trade, and moderate political and social reform" this has no correlation to the results of the policies put in place by those who call themselves liberal. The undeniable attempt of gannon260 to change the focus of the debate to what he deems as liberal is nonsensical. Instead, we have to look at what liberal politicians have done, yet what have they done? 1.Minimum wage 2.Affirmative action 3.Welfare schemes 4.Fight against school choice It is curious that none of these things are mentioned in gannon260"s definition of liberal. The plain fact is results matter more than ideology. And the results of liberal policies are detrimental to the African-American community 1.Minimum wage: Minimum wage has made it, as I have proven, harder and harder for young African-Americans to find low-pay work so that they might get skills to be productive enough to earn a higher wage 2.Affirmative action: Affirmative action has left thousands of black college students racked up with student debt and without a school due to their inability to meet the expectations they were expected to meet due to being put in schools they were unqualified for 3.Welfare schemes Con claims that welfare schemes are designed to help African-Americans escape poverty, and yet we find welfare rolls swelling with each passing day. Even as con claims how great the Obama recovery has been we have record amounts of African-Americans on food stamps. 4.School choice Despite con saying school choice is "new evidence" I actually brought it up to point out that the reason why so many African-Americans find themselves poor is due to lack of access to quality education. Secondly he said he was against school choice if it was about private schools. If, by his own definition, liberals are for individual liberty, why won"t liberals let poor African Americans choose their own school? The hypocrisy is unbelievable, and it proves exactly why lexical definitions have no place in a debate over policies and their results. Whether it be at the federal, state, or local level, liberal policies have left their mark. The top 10 poorest cities, have been ran by democrats for decades (1). Meanwhile, the top 5 ranking states are all run by republicans, and the three worst states are run by democrats (2). Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and always expecting different results." My question to you, neutral reader, is: while 90% of African-Americans vote democrat year after year, and as these democrats leaders hold office in the worst run states and the poorest cities, is it really intelligent and sit around and argue whether or not they are actually "liberal"? For me personally, I will take their word for it. And I will take the results of their polices as my standard rather than what they say they believe in. Ultimately, the path forward for African-Americans is access to good education, colleges where they can succeed, a road off of dependence and towards independence, and too live freely, richly, and happily as the majority of Americans do. The real question, is whether we wish to see those results with a conservative, free market roadmap, or whether we will keep going along the same liberal path of government intervention, planning, and the typical results of strife and poverty. I urge all readers to vote pro, and vote out democrats in your next election. Whether or not they are "liberal" under con"s definition is irrelevant. They themselves call themselves liberals, and their policies are horrible. Thank you