Politics

Statistics from Walter Williams show blacks grew up in two parent households for most of the post slavery era until today.

"Coupled with the dramatic breakdown in the black family structure has been an astonishing growth in the rate of illegitimacy. The black illegitimacy rate in 1940 was about 14 percent; black illegitimacy today is over 70 percent, and in some cities, it is over 80 percent."

...

"The point of bringing up these historical facts is to ask this question, with a bit of sarcasm: Is the reason the black family was far healthier in the late 1800s and 1900s that back then there was far less racial discrimination and there were greater opportunities? Or did what experts call the “legacy of slavery” wait several generations to victimize today’s blacks?"

Williams is saying that the breakdown of the black family is the major cause of black social problems, but he doesn't explain why black families have broken down, and the biggest factor is government. Socialist schools and interventionist economic policies cause high black unemployment. Throw in the minimum wage, the war on drugs, and welfare, and this is terrible for black families. The government is waging war on all families, and as with all government policies, poor and black families suffer the worse from it.

Blacks know race relations have deteriorated since Obama took office, but I wonder if they blame Obama.

Claim that the state rose as revolutionary monarchs wrestled power from the church.

"Eventually the Hapsburgs, “provoked beyond endurance by the Protestant challenge to their throne, launched the Thirty Years War in a last ditch effort to restore the Imperial power in Germany if not throughout Europe.”
The war ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, marking the triumph of the monarch over both the Empire and the Church.  The Emperor lost any pretension of rule over other rulers, as firm lines were drawn with clear sovereignty within each border.  The conflicting power that was a landmark of medieval decentralization throughout Europe came to a final (at least for now :-) ) end."

OK.

"The struggle against the nobility was marked with a gradual eroding of the idea of law by custom – the old and good law of the Middle Ages.  The king was determined not to be limited to merely enforcing the law (with his decision subject to veto by any noble), but would also create law."

We see how that worked out.

"A measure of the success in this transition can be marked by the accession of Charles I in England in 1625, when for the first time a new king in England felt sufficiently secure to refrain from executing the noblemen of his predecessor – the nobility had been neutered.
In place of the old and good law, Roman law – useful for centralizing power – was once again introduced.

Whichever way one looks at it, the dawning age of absolutism found rulers raised to splendid heights rarely attained, if indeed contemplated, by their relatively humble medieval predecessors.

Sadly, for the rest of us."

It got a lot worse.

Government in a city-state.

I'm positive animals are smarter than experts think, but I bet this article is about trying to give them human rights.