Liberalism Diagnosed
By Kevin Jackson
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas Today under President Obama the liberals racial victim-narrative no longer persuades.
The challenge now is for Americans of whatever color to choose between self-determination & dependency. Come with me on a brief tour of Americas racial history.
Michelle Obama said it would take Baracks election in 2008 to make her proud as a black American. Thats too bad because for a lot of us the pride and gratitude at being part of the USA date back much further.
Well find ironies and surprises at every turn. Well learn that the liberals victim-narrative is just not so. And well see that the politics of 2011 have taken us right back to the 60sthe 1960s and even the 1860s. Racially today America is what I call full circle flipped."
Civil Rights in Reverse
Think about it. Decades ago America had white Republicans marching arm in arm to fight for the civil rights of blacks as white Democrats jeered.
Now with Herman Cain running for president Tim Scott helping lead the House and Walter Williams subbing for Rush Limbaugh America has black Republicans fighting shoulder to shoulder for the civil rights of all Americans as all Democrats jeer.
With the fight to restore individual liberty and economic freedom by getting big governments boot off our neck a sort of reverse" civil rights movement is afoot. You could say we are working toward Emancipation II: This time even the white folks get freed!
It is ironic that the very vote Republicans fought to obtain for black people is now being used against them and the rest of the country for that matter. The irony of the black votecitizenship exercised by individuals whose ancestors were propertyhas made it one of the most endlessly-discussed subjects in American politics. And it will be so again in 2012. You dont hear pundits speculating How will the Irish-Americans vote?"
A Unique Distinction
This fascination this troubled legacy dates from the beginning of our country. Black people had the unique distinction of being written specifically into the founding documents. Though the word itself is never used slavery is seen in key provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
The first is in the Enumeration Clause Article I Section 2 where representatives are apportioned. This clause has been intentionally misrepresented by liberals who claim that that the three-fifths compromise meant that the Founders only valued blacks as 3/5 of a person. Not at all; the intent was quite the opposite. It was in fact an attempt to minimize the power of slave-holders to propagate slavery more widely by reducing the Southern states voting strength in the House and in the Electoral College.
Slavery next appears in Article I Section 9 which forbids Congress from prohibiting the importation of African persons prior to the year 1808"a date that represented a compromise of 20 years. So January 1 1808 was set as the first day of what many Americans hoped would gradually become the end of slavery.
The Fugitive Slave Clause in Article IV Section 2 is the last provision in the Constitution relating to blacks. It required that an escaped person held to service or labor" be delivered back to the state where he had escaped from. I think this keep em on the plantation" approach is one of the few parts of the Constitution that paternalistic liberals would still like to see enforced.
One Long Step
It has been said that the seeds of the Civil War were sown in these three compromises of the Constitutionespecially Article I Section 9which prohibited the importation of slaves. To get around this Southerners (Democrats all) decided to make the descendants of slaves slavesthus creating the potential for slavery to go on forever.
Thankfully Lincoln understood the gravity of the atrocity of slavery which America ultimately confronted in the Civil War.
Then came Fort Sumter Emancipation Appomattox and finally Reconstructiona decade beginning in 1867 that was invidiously labeled Radical Reconstruction" by Democrat historians. By 1876 white Americans had taken one long step toward making things right with black Americans.
There are aspects of this 1870s period which parallel our own modern-day Tea Party movement and you might think of it as the First Black Renaissance. Blacks got the right to vote. More blacks served in politics than at any time in history. But as Reconstruction ended Democrats began marginalizing the black vote through intimidation and egregious laws like Jim Crow.
The next iconic period was the 1920s. Blacks were becoming mainstream in much of the country and this period ushered in the Harlem Renaissancethe black cultural revolution centered in Harlem New York. I call this the Second Black Renaissance. The movement was primarily literary involved art music dance and theater and fostered black pride and uplifting of the race through the use of intellect.
Blacks challenged racial stereotypes and helped promote integration. A passive civil rights movement began during this period not so much with marching protests but more with blacks focusing on self-importance and self-worth in the spirit of Booker T. Washington.
Switching Parties
Shortly thereafter America hit hard times during the Great Depression which brought us the New Deal. Until the 1930s blacks had voted overwhelmingly Republican as much as 95 percent. However by the end of Franklin Roosevelts first administration one of the most dramatic voter shifts in American history had occurred and in 1936 some 75 percent of black voters supported the Democrats.
Blacks turned to Roosevelt in part because his spending programs gave them a measure of relief from the Depression. The larger reason though was because blacks felt that the GOP had done little to repay their earlier support. Compare this with the situation of many blacks in America today who continue to feel abandoned by the Republicans yet sense that they are taken for grantedand taken advantage ofby Democrats.
Now heres another racial irony: Most New Deal programs discriminated against blacks. The National Recovery Administration not only offered whites the first crack at jobs but authorized separate and lower pay scales for blacks. The Federal Housing Authority refused to guarantee mortgages for blacks who tried to buy in white neighborhoods. The Civilian Conservation Corps maintained segregated camps.
The Agricultural Adjustment Administration acreage reduction hit black sharecroppers extremely hard. The Social Security Act excluded those job categories blacks traditionally filled. There is no surprise in any of this since FDR went along comfortably with the prevailing racist attitudes of his time and party. He appointed both Hugo Black a KKK member and James Byrnes an arch-segregationist to the Supreme Court.
The 1960s ushered in the next iconic era for black Americansthe civil rights movement and the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Johnson believed that problems of housing income employment and health were ultimately a federal responsibility and he called his vision the Great Society.
Great Society: Really?
Liberal historians point to all the legislation passed by LBJ in the War on Poverty and claim there were real gains. But in reality those programs merely repositioned private-sector successes under government control. Like FDR his hero LBJ had a racist streak a plantation mentality implicit in his Great Society agenda.
This was a man who worried about Negroes getting uppity" and spoke of giving them just enough to quiet them down not enough to make a difference." Shocked? You can look it up.
So in 1966 Congress adopted the Model Cities Act to assure adequate housing" and to attack urban blight. Hows that working? It certainly managed to corral blacks and keep urban blight from spreading into the white suburbs. The act also began a dependency inducing program of rent supplements.
Supposedly to promote learning Congress passed the Higher Education Act in 1965 to provide student loans and scholarships the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act of 1965 to pay for textbooks and the Educational Opportunity Act of 1968 to help the poor finance college educations. All that and Americas kids today are dumber than most previous generations.
The Medicaid Act of 1968 paid for the medical expenses of the poor and Medicare established in 1965 extended health insurance to older Americans alongside the Social Security system. Both systems are laced with fraud and abuse and are now essentially insolvent.
Pretty much any program that is currently bankrupting the country was begun by FDR in the 30s and put on steroids by LBJ in the 60s. These two racially manipulative Democrats taught the poor everything but to help themselves.
Bookerites vs. DuBoisians
A fierce debate among black Americans began in the 1980s. The old battle lines were drawn again with new intensity: the Bookerites vs. the DuBoisians. The black conservative was born the antithesis of the 60s radical. The Booker T. Washington idea of individual accountability clashed with the W.E.B. DuBois idea of government social engineering. The winner is undetermined as of yet but most would say its the DuBoisians.
So by 2008 we had come as I said full circle flipped." The election of a black president was supposed to end the idea of racism in America and we were all supposed to be happier than a preachers kid at a biker-chick rally. Instead we find ourselves in the midst of this renewed and reversed civil rights movement.
Is there not enough evidence that blacks (and anybody else) can achieve whatever they choose in America and that racism in the mainstream is pretty much nonexistent? Of course there is. But the left doesnt care about reality.
I can only imagine how many moderates and lefties who voted for the Obama fantasy feel now about the Obama reality. Probably much like I felt when I learned that Fonzie the coolest yesteryear Italian on TV was really a mousy Jewish guy named Winkler. Say it aint so!
The left needs victims to justify itself and victims need guilty oppressors to blame. What has all this guilt and blame gotten America? Seventeen trillion dollars spent on counter-productive liberal programs to fight the War on Poverty. In case youre wondering poverty is still winning.
Were constantly scolded about the lack of diversity here in the most diverse country on the planetbecause liberals know its easier to transform" America if they can keep us jumping through hoops going on snipe hunts.
Liberalism Diagnosed
Liberals seem to want America to be anything but America. To them our love of the greatness of America is silly worthy of ridicule. Because of our belief in things like the Constitution the Bible the sanctity of life and marriage or the right to bear arms were barbarians in their eyes.
How can you not love America? Maybe the reason liberals dont know how to love this country is that they dont really love themselves. They are restless for the next fad the next ism." All they need is proof that an idea hasnt worked anywhere else and they are all in.
If liberals cant create jobs they try to convince you they saved yours. If you dont buy that they say things like: It could have been worse!" or Obama just needs more time!"
Obamas budget reminds me of the wife asking her husband Should I get a bikini or an all-in-one?" The husband replies Better get a bikini...youll never get it all in one." This president promised to cut the deficit in half in his first term. He bet on socialism and ended up doubling the deficit.
Then when he asked for more debt-ceiling room his supporters whined We raised it for the white presidents!" Yes and it was wrong then too. But because nobody wanted to be labeled a racist Obama got more room for him to create debt in order to convince us that he will cut debt. Liberals called that innovative thinking." I call it crackhead logic.
According to liberals the reason we cant pay our bills is not because of Obamas policies. No its because of the people the conservatives the Tea Partyhow dare they want responsible accountable government that follows the Constitution?
Liberalism steals ambition from people. This is why too many black people feel like merely inhabitants of their neighborhoods; because we dont live there. Living there implies LIFE. Life is vibrant; inhabitants just exist.
Liberalism has killed the entrepreneurial spirit that fueled the black middle class in the 1950s before LBJs Great Society. To call liberal policies a disaster is to be too kind. Liberalism has created an ecosystem where when America sneezes black America gets pneumonia!
Time to Fight Back
Yet its also true that our countrys widely-distributed economic growth has raised poverty" to such a level that Americas poor represent the rich of other nations.
Americas poor have subsidized housing subsidized food cars cell phones video games flat-screen TVs big wardrobes and pocket change. In other countries the poor are happy to eat and have running water. Most dont.
Our poor are spoiled. Economists say there are some three million jobs currently available however nobody wants them because welfare pays better. Incentives are debased as is the language itself. What is an entitlement" anyway? You are entitled to what you earn everything else is a handout. Whats all this about government making investments"? The government doesnt invest it taxes then spends. Period.
The government doesnt want us to know that we have gone from being citizens for whom they work to being clients whom they keep on the hook. We have all been born into this new form of slaveryall of us whatever our colorand it has cost us $17 trillion and counting. Emancipation II is overdue. Its time to fight back.
G. K. Chesterton wrote
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him but because he loves what is behind him."
Whats behind us? What are we fighting for? Im fighting for my nations proud heritage and my kids endangered future. How about you?
Kevin Jackson of St. Louis is editor of TheBlackSphere.net a columnist for The American Thinker and author of The Big Black Lie.
