is most American conflict inherently intra-racial

[krazen1211]

Have you been speaking with jmfcst off the forum?  He was big on movie quotes express his views, but at least he usually gave ones relevant to the topic at hand.  Besides, Chancellor Palpatine was definitely a reactionary and not a progressive, so not only is your quote irrelevant to the subject of whether freedom is a scarce resource, your commentary on it is completely wrong.

On the contrary. A fellow like Palpatine  is quite willing and eager to bulldoze over the common man in pursuit of whatever they deem to be a just, safe, and secure society. The modern progressive is the same.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Ernest: I mentioned positive rights because I can imagine a system of thought in which what are thought of as positive rights shouldn't be granted to everyone as something other than horrifying, whereas systems of thought in which the government shouldn't even be allowed to make sure everybody has, at least in theory, exercise of more or less the same negative rights just strike me as abominable (this isn't to say that I think that people who believe that are automatically awful people in general, but I'm far less willing to entertain their ideas about politics and related subjects). That's the distinction that I was trying to make, not that one is somehow more theoretically possible than the other. Sorry for the confusion.

I don't think krazen understands Star Wars very well, but at least he seems to understand it better than he does Aladdin.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Ernest: I mentioned positive rights because I can imagine a system of thought in which what are thought of as positive rights shouldn't be granted to everyone as something other than horrifying, whereas systems of thought in which the government shouldn't even be allowed to make sure everybody has, at least in theory, exercise of more or less the same negative rights just strike me as abominable (this isn't to say that I think that people who believe that are automatically awful people in general, but I'm far less willing to entertain their ideas about politics and related subjects). That's the distinction that I was trying to make, not that one is somehow more theoretically possible than the other. Sorry for the confusion.

Even with a government that tries its best to extend negative rights as much as possible, those rights will occasionally come into conflict unless it does so by being so weak as to be more anarchy than archy, in which case those negative rights can be violated by private actors.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Ernest: I mentioned positive rights because I can imagine a system of thought in which what are thought of as positive rights shouldn't be granted to everyone as something other than horrifying, whereas systems of thought in which the government shouldn't even be allowed to make sure everybody has, at least in theory, exercise of more or less the same negative rights just strike me as abominable (this isn't to say that I think that people who believe that are automatically awful people in general, but I'm far less willing to entertain their ideas about politics and related subjects). That's the distinction that I was trying to make, not that one is somehow more theoretically possible than the other. Sorry for the confusion.

Even with a government that tries its best to extend negative rights as much as possible, those rights will occasionally come into conflict unless it does so by being so weak as to be more anarchy than archy, in which case those negative rights can be violated by private actors.

Fair point, which I guess I'd excuse myself from by saying that this way of talking about politics, central to American discourse though it is, bothers me in general.

[Redalgo]

All conflict among human beings is interpersonal and much (but not all) of it is caused by scarcity of resources. Looking at it as a matter of race, class, sex, etc. can be useful for conceptualization but we are of a species comprised of imperfectly informed, imperfectly rational, and invariably self-interested individuals who both compete against and collaborate with others to get what they want. There is no such thing as "white interests" or "black interests" or even "WASP interests." Hell, there are not even clear interests of class. Those are all fuzzy approximations drawn from what one perceives the people in each group as having in common interest.

If you want to make a case for people being more willing to trust and collaborate with folk who are like themselves (i.e. those with whom there is little social distance) I think that would be quite sensible, but social conflict is far too complex to be accurately described in terms of groups and their perceived interests. Groups are tools instead of living beings with minds we can plumb to discern their goals, strategies, or reasoning. Corporate super-organisms such as firms, NGOs, political parties, governments and so forth can in certain contexts be useful to discuss and treat as if they were living beings comprised of specialized cells (in this case people) - just as in the case of social groups you are discussing - but in the real world they are just bands of individuals whose interests coincide enough for them to cooperate but are nonetheless diverse and often in conflict.

[Mechaman]

Religious bigotry has rarely been a significant factor in large-scale American politics. It has usually imploded quickly as a political influence.     

Face. Freaking. Palm.

[Lurker]

An author by the name of Kevin Phillips wrote something like that in his 1969 book "The Emerging Republican Majority".

Obvious troll.

Agreed, but it should be specified that he was  an obvious troll. For many years he has been strongly renouncing his earlier views (Though you could claim, of course, that he is trolling for the other side these days. Sort of like an opposite David Horowitz, with the exception of Phillips not appearing to be an aggressive douchebag).

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

It's a bit more complicated than that.  The real war is between the owning class and the working class.  The owning class does what it can to incite the working class into racial conflict as a distraction from the true conflict.