Thanks, gets.

I debate a lot of people, maybe far more than I should, for the purpose of informing. I don't relish fights or the sort of trolling hit and run arguments that a lot of these internet fools get into. After sounding semi-rational, that internet debater ended up writing a bunch of gibberish and how he needs to stop doing cocaine. Whatever. I wish I could get a refund for all that time I wasted on him.

On the church and Haiti, obviously there's little I can write about that. You know far more than I do and I must defer to you on these matters. However, I will say this, if they have anything in common with the churches in the hood, then that might be part of the problem. Years ago I had a first hand chance to examine a lot of the black churches in Los Angeles. For a while I attended a black evangelical church. Almost everyone dressed well and worked as professionals. There was a message of personal responsibility in the sermons and it made a difference in people's lives. This church was the exception.

Most of the other black churches fell into the following categories: the theologically liberal/black nationalist churches that taught victimhood, the more conservative health and prosperity churches that taught that God will make you rich and personal responsibility is irrelevant. Then there is the third category -- and some of these churches overlap with the other two -- where church is basically a social club. The first kind of church teaches anger, the second teaches greed, and the third teaches self-centeredness. The problem isn't the number of churches, but an excess of the wrong kind of churches. And those are just the Protestant churches and doesn't cover the Catholic churches or less traditional groups such as Santeria and Voodoo. You may or may not agree, but I hope you understand my point.