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[paxamicus AT earthlink.net]

I think we are misunderstanding each other. The DC chief of police has  
set up what is a de facto ghetto in the SE section of DC. People  
coming and going are subject to search and questioning for no other  
reason than being there. I was not talking about gating communities in  
the slightest. On one hand, their Constitutional right to bear arms,  
on the other, a complete infringement of their right to freedom. It  
was that bit or irony I was commenting on.

The citizens living in that section have complained strenuously, but  
it hasn't just gone away. Gated communities are a very different  
thing. People choose them.



On Jun 26, 2008, at 12:56 PM, bob ford wrote:

> Come-on now,  You've always seemed to be a worldly person; you've  
> surely spent time visiting people in those communities in urban  
> areas.  Do you really think the expense and unappealing aesthetics   
> of the gates, tall fences, and armed guards are there to isolate  
> those people who "choose" to live there from other people who look  
> and behave like them.
>
> Those impediments are there to separate them from the 'different',  
> the 'other'.
>
> In the case you describe or in gated communities, one type of  
> citizen is being separated from another.  I'm not saying either way  
> is right or wrong ( though I do have an opinion), I'm just  
> acknowledging what I see.
>
> I love it when I visit acquaintances in those gated communities and  
> hear them parroting multi-cultural phraseology and talking about  
> their progressive political leanings.  In reality, the main color in  
> their lives generally happen when they are sitting in Starbucks ,  
> drinking a dark coffee; going to a professional sports game; or  
> paying their gardeners.
>
> I actually live a multi-cultural life.  The next door neighbor to  
> the south of me is a single homosexual man with an ex-wife and grown  
> children; the next house is is a male homosexual couple (they've  
> been together for at least the fourteen years since they moved into  
> the neighborhood), my next door neighbor to the north is a nice guy,  
> but a he is a homophobe who won't speak to the others, though he did  
> help the couple once with a tree problem, he just wouldn't act too  
> friendly.   Across the street from him is a lesbian with a black  
> male roommate.  The neighbor across from me is a former racist who  
> married a woman with a ten year old black daughter.  My neighbor  
> treats that little girl like a princess. The lady next to him is  
> Jewish.  My wife is Catholic and I'm just weird.
>
> Our neighborhood is largely white and Christian,but with the welcome  
> inclusion of the 'other'; And we tend to only wall in our back yards.
>
> If you have to have fences around any part of a densely populated  
> urban
> area, it is because the social engineering of the past couple of  
> generations was wrong; not because of a single elected or appointed  
> police chief or sheriff, etc....bobford