The chickens coming home to roost:

[El Supremo]

Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Malcolm X:
When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Malcolm publicly described it as “the chickens coming home to roost.”

Yes, this is out of context. But I make it that Reverend Wright is a student of Malcolm X and I don't like that one bit.

I am very happy that Barack Obama has condemned this.

[Berry Cool]

1. Me too.

Malcolm X actually changed before he died. His attitudes became softer than his original hardened one, which was that whites were the Devil and the enemy. People seem to forget that.

[lligrd]

2. Yeah, We Wouldn't Want To Consider Anything We Might

be doing to provoke these people. They are evil we are good. Blah blah blah.

[Berry Cool]

5. That is not the point.

The point is that evil never justifies the doing of more evil. The old "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" saying.

Blowback happens, but there is a difference between acknowledging blowback happens and believing that it is justified or righteous.

The only answer for evil is for good to wipe out evil.

The phrase "the chickens have come home to roost" is never, never, NEVER used in any context other than to say a) "What was sown has been reaped" and b) "It was RIGHT AND GOOD that what was sown was reaped."

[skooooo]

8. There are two things here though...

1. There is *intent* of future action, and on that I would agree with you. Evil shouldn't be used to wipe out evil. This is not what is being discussed though.

2. There is understanding that people don't do things without some reason -- whatever that reason is. That reason may be miscalculated, wrong, unjustified, but it is still a reason. People that caused 9/11 didn't do it because they were "crazy." They had a reason.

[lligrd]

9. I Think You Are Wrong

It can just mean Karma. Doesn't mean it is good that it happens, just that it is balance and will be.

We should quit pretending we are innocent in all of this.

[drmeow]

10. Can you provide any documentation that

'The phrase "the chickens have come home to roost" is never, never, NEVER used in any context other than to say a) "What was sown has been reaped" and b) "It was RIGHT AND GOOD that what was sown was reaped."'

I've never understood it to mean that ... I've always understood it to mean not so much that it was right and good that what was sown was reaped but that it was not surprising that what was sown was reaped.

[skooooo]

6. Not if it makes anyone uncomfortable!!

I mean, we wouldn't want to make anyone uncomfortable, so those things just shouldn't be said.

:sarcasm:

[patrice]

3. It's not exactly an unusual phrase.

If I say my cat is "black as night", does that make me a comrad of someone else who said something else was black as night a quarter of a century ago?

[asdjrocky]

4. This is the wrong forum for this stuff.

[Berry Cool]

7. You're right

and for that reason I will discuss it no more here.

[OhioBlue]

11. That's a very common phrase n/t