Tiger Woods, Al Sharpton, And The State Of Race In America

     I fully expect that the "reverend" Al Sharpton, et al in the Civil Rights Industrial Complex will shortly be holding protests against professional golf because it is racist for using white balls. The object of the Professional Golfers' Association's factious racism is the down trodden Tiger Woods, who shot an 85 at the Jack Nicholas tournament over the past weekend. While I and my golfing buddies would consider an 85 to be a good score, professional golfers generally shoot in the high 60s to low 70s during 18 holes of golf.
     Of course my above scenario is exaggeration for the purpose of making a point. Tiger's problems are firmly rooted in the result of his own behavior which lead him to back into a fire hydrant full speed in the course of an argument with his wife over his infidelity, thus resulting in what appears to be a career-mitigating back injury. Some have even suggested that his fall from the grace of the golfing gods was just desserts for his cheatin' ways.
     How the mighty have fallen, and no one knows this better than Tiger Woods who won his first major PGA event by the time he was 22. For almost a decade he seem to be unstoppable in his quest to surpass the great Jack Nicholas, who stacked up 18 major tournament wins, a record, that at least for the time being, seems safe from being broken by Tiger Woods or anyone else. Every golfer has slumps and bad rounds, Jack Nicholas had 6 tournament rounds during his career when he scored in the 80s.
     But I digress. Returning to my cartoonish scenario that has "reverend" Sharpton taking up the cause of Tiger's deteriorating golf game and blaming it on racism, I have just become accustom to accepting the completely irrational from members of the Left. From Hillary Clinton recently accusing Republicans of mass voter suppression on par with the Democrats' Jim Crow laws in the early to mid 20th century, to Sharpton, Obama, et al blaming the very predictable outcome to criminals who flaunt and attack the law, on law enforcement, the Left has officially gone off the deep end of reality.
     I remember my father taking me and my two brothers to the PGA championship in the mid-1970s, which was held at Canterbury Golf Club near where we lived. I remember getting a dozen or so autographs, picking up a tee left behind by one of the pros (do not remember which one now), Arnold Palmer stepping on my foot with his spikes as he signed an autograph for me, and I remember something Lee Trevino said.  He was signing programs in the scorers' tent and a young black kid asked, "Mr. Trevino, what kind of ball do you use?" Lee, without missing a beat said, "I use a white one son."
     These days, Mr. Trevino would be drummed out of golf, and forced to live in shame for being "racially insensitive." I guess my point is (for those of you still reading and wondering) we have not become more racially sensitive as a society but less so. We have traded the evil of institutionalized racism for the evil of institutionalized silencing of any racial commentary. And the real tragedy is that there will come a day when professional golf may be forced to use a more chromatically diverse range of colored balls so as not to offend anyone who may base their fragile ethnic egos on the color of the ball a professional golfer chooses to use.
    

Cleveland Braces For Brelo Verdict

     On November 29, 2012 Cleveland police were lead on a 23 mile chase through Cleveland, into East Cleveland by two crackheads named Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. Russell, the driver of the vehicle the pair were in, tried to use his vehicle as a weapon against police. Thirteen officers open fired on the pair, fearing they had a gun which they had reason to believe, but which later turned out to be not true. Russell and Williams were shot dead after the officers fired 137 rounds of ammunition into the vehicle.
     Officer Michael Brelo was one of the officers on the seen that night, and amazingly enough was the only officer charged in the deaths of Russell and Williams. Some how it was determined by Prosecutor McGinty that the rounds that killed Russell and Williams came from the gun of Officer Michael Brelo. Mr. McGinty then set about his task of poisoning the jury pool by beginning to try the case in public before the trial.
     So dedicated was Prosecutor McGinty to a figurative lynching of Michael Brelo that he tried to deny the defendant his constitutional right to waive a trial by jury, which would be culled from the Cleveland pool that McGinty had prejudiced against the defendant. Thankfully for the sake of justice the Brelo legal team was able to secure Mr. Brelo's right to have the case decided by a judge. Being a resident of a suburb of Cleveland, I am well acquainted with the political shenanigans of Mr. McGinty. But the political motivations of some prosecutors is a subject for another article.
     The trial of officer Brelo has ended and the city is awaiting word from the judge on the guilt or non-guilt of Michael Brelo. During the ensuing period Cleveland city leaders are on edge and calling for non-violence in the case that the embattled officer is found not guilty in the deaths of Russell and Williams. I have to wonder why they are not bracing for violence and calling for calm in the event that Mr. Brelo is found guilty?
     This dichotomy of reactions to the same event in Cleveland, Ohio is illustrative of the reduced expectations that the Left has for certain groups over other groups based solely on skin color and socio-economic status. It also is educative of the willingness of such leaders to abdicate their responsibility to keep law and order in the city, having been completely cowered by the mob.
     God forbid that Cleveland erupts in days of violence if Michael Brelo is found not guilty. It is a strange hypocrisy on the Left that leads to a child being suspended from school for biting his sand which into the shape of a gun because of a "no tolerance" policy toward violence in our schools, yet a blind eye is turned by these same people when street thugs use real guns, fire, bricks, and looting to "protest" what they see as inequality.

Time To Remove The Race Card From The Deck

     This week at a museum dedication no less, First Lady Michelle Obama used the opportunity to once again play the race card, as has been her and her husband's modus operandi for the last six plus years. From her high perch of extreme wealth and power she reached back into her privileged childhood where she grew up in a family who financially was firmly planted in the top ten percent of wage earners in the country, to once again whine about being discriminated against based on her skin color, this time in the museums of Chicago. Correct me if I am wrong, but are not most museums dominated by Left-leaning persons? So if poor little rich girl Michelle was kept out of museums in her neighborhood, which I highly doubt, it was done so by those of the same political ideology of the First Lady.
     The latest myth proffered by the race-baiters and race-profiteers is that blacks need to be held to a lower standard when it comes to public behavior and law breaking because of the effect that slavery has had on their psyches. This load of excrement is matched only by the product of pumping the portable toilets at a hippie festival that has free granola bars. If a black child was placed into an environment from birth in which the terms and conditions of slavery were never a part of his education, he would not inherently have some emotional reaction to that institution.   
     In other words to the extent that modern blacks, who are at least half a dozen generations removed from slavery, have a disability because of an institution which was abandoned and outlawed by an ever more just society 150 years ago, it is because of those who benefit from convincing them of that particular disability. The Democrat Party and others on the Left have a vested interest in keeping the flames of revenge against America for slavery alive and well. As well as having a vested interest in inculcating as many blacks as possible with the feelings of inadequacy as a result of an institution of which they had no part.
     The real slave masters are those on the Left that choose not to inspire blacks by holding up as an example of achievement those of their race like the Obamas, Colin Powel, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Ben Carson, et al, but conversely choose to weigh down the black race with the anchor of resentment for ills of a society that long ago have been banished from civilized life.  

Black Disaffection And The Radical Gay Community

     There are those that say the causes of the anger under which the Baltimore rioters are operating are many and complex. Some, like the president, think, or at least he says he thinks, the cause is lack of "investment" in minority communities. But this overly simplistic assessment is one which is designed to grow government with even more programs that help bureaucrats and community agitator types, but very few others. After all, over the last 50 years this country has taken 22 trillion from those who have earned it, ostensibly to lift up the down trodden. The only thing that has been lifted are the incomes of those who administer such programs.
     I do not subscribe to the notion that it has been this country's past sin of slavery, and the subsequent sin of discrimination, that has so thoroughly disaffected young blacks today that the only way they see to express themselves is by looting, burning, and committing other acts of violence upon the city in which they live. Since Republicans slapped down the Democrats racist policies that kept blacks in second class citizen status fifty years ago, blacks have seen their ranks swell in professions from law to electrical engineering.
     But those on the Left and in the Democrat Party who benefit from disaffectedness among blacks have sought to preach the sermon of racial inequality, and the sacrament of slavery victimhood. This new racism, practiced by white Democrats and the black community's self-appointed leaders, aims to enslave blacks on the Leftist plantation of dependence by convincing them that their success in life does not depend on the content of their character, but their ability to mark a ballot for Democrats.
     But now after 50 years of assigning the power of civil rights almost exclusively to blacks, Democrats have transferred its deed to the radical homosexual community. The U.S. census data reveals that the gay population in America is about 2.3% of the total population. Of that six million or so gays only about two million are in committed relationships, according to a recent Gallup poll. Even if all the gays in committed relationships are rabid supporters of changing the millennia old definition of marriage to now include homosexual relationships, that comprises a population of about two million people.
     No wonder blacks are upset, they have been sent to the back of the bus by Democrats in favor of their new favorite minority group that is about one twentieth the size. I believe the real disaffection of blacks has come at the hands of the political Party that has for decades told them they had their backs, and now has left their numbers ravaged by destructive programs, in favor of a new and sexier minority that never suffered slavery, Jim Crow, or violence committed against them as they were marching for their basic right to participate in society.
    
    

From Civil Rights Movement To Civil Rights Industry

     At the exact moment when the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. lay slain by an assassin's bullet, and Jesse Jackson smeared the blood of this great man on himself for the benefit of media photographers, the civil rights movement transformed from a movement into a big business. Since then, those like Mr. Jackson who claim the desendency of Reverend King, have engaged in the thuggery of nickel and dime hoods operating a protection racket, and the hallowed halls of government have been infiltrated by a sort of racial constranada.
     The modern day civil rights movement is about civil rights like the modern day environmental movement is about the environment. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al have engaged in a shake down operation where money is redistributed from businesses to their organizations, and to Democrats running for office. The way it works is that Jackson, or whom ever, approaches a business and accuses them of engaging in discriminatory hiring practices. The corporation, in order to avoid the embarrassment of picketing and boycotts agrees to pay a butt-load of money to Jackson's organization in the form of high paying jobs in the company's newly created "diversity" department.
     The shake down process works much the same way in government agencies which threaten to use the force of government to "take down" a company which refuses to "donate" money to advocacy groups or pay direct fines to a government agency. The latest of these shake downs was exposed several years ago in the Eric Holder Justice Department. The Attorney General intimidated banks into paying hundreds of millions of dollars in protection money or be charged with civil rights violations. And as someone once said, every American commits at least three felonies a day, so if the government wants to get you they will.
     The modern day civil rights industrial complex is fueled by myths and lies about slavery and racism in America. Primary to these myths is that white men originally brought slavery to America. Not true. The first American slave was John Casor who was owned by a black man named Anthony Johnson. The year was 1654 and Johnson had indentured Casor for a period of seven years, which had expired. Johnson refused to release Casor, and the latter left and began working for another farmer named Parker. Johnson sued Parker and the court found that he had the right to hold Casor indefinitely, thus creating slavery in America and making the black man Anthony Johnson the first slave owner.
     Another myth about slavery is that America was the most prodigious of slave nations. Not true again. There were more white slaves brought into North Africa by the Ottomans than there were ever black slaves brought into America. And the African white slave trade lasted until long after America had become the first nation in the world to ban the barbaric practice altogether. Many wrongly think it was Great Britain that was the first country to ban slavery, but they only banned the slave trade. Many within the UK held slaves long after the American Civil War had essentially eradicated slavery in the United States.
     Race has become such an industry in this country that there are those who owe their careers to the fomentation of racial divide, such as our current president and those in the media like Chris Matthews, who are bereft of any intellectual heft sans the charge of racism. It was recently estimated by the Kato institute that the race industry in this country, in the private and public sectors, generates over a hundred billion dollars in revenue for various groups who depend on perpetuating that which they claim they are against. And it all began when the blood of a Godly man was used by an un-Godly one to forever enslave a nation in racial divide for the material benefit of a few. 

The Precipitous Downfall Of Black Culture

     Unless one is involved in profiting handsomely from the race-baiting industry like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama, et al, it would be near impossible not to acknowledge that black Americans have enjoyed the swiftest reclamation of their civil rights in the last 50 years than any other minority throughout history. Just think about it, during my lifetime (I am 52 years of age) black Americans have gone from riding in the back of busses, drinking from black-only water fountains, and being generally treated as second-class citizens even by Hollywood Leftists, to having greater opportunity, not only than other minorities, but than the majority white population in this country.
     Somehow with all these rights, privileges, and the crutch of Affirmative Action, blacks in America have traded a rich, and in many ways an unparalleled, contribution to our society for slavery to the Democrat Party and the ruination it has caused in their culture. The American black culture which gave us the ingenuity of George Washington Carver, the ground breaking music of jazz and blues which spawned rock-n-roll, the uplifting and inspirational words of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and the jurisprudence genius of Thurgood Marshall, has now deteriorated into a cacophony of racial sound pollution both in music and activism.
     I am not saying that blacks do not make contributions every day in this country in medicine, law, literature, and a myriad other professions, only that as a culture American blacks have turned the innovation of George Washington Carver into the stale air of entitlement, the genius of jazz and blues into the sewage of cop-hating, misogynistic rap music, the uplifting words of the Reverend King into the divisive and victimizing words of self-serving community activists, and the thirst for justice of Thurgood Marshall into the "social justice" delivered by the hand of big government that chokes the liberty from every race that bears the yoke of its burden.  
     It has been a spectacular achievement by the Democrat Party over the last half century to transform a rich and spiritual culture into one in which self-victimization has replaced discrimination at the hands of whites, an eighty percent out-of-wedlock birth rate has replaced enviably intact families, and the striving of a people to prove their worth has been replaced by an entitlement to worth without the striving. Again, do not get me wrong, there are blacks in this country that contribute to the family of man every day. But as a culture they have had their sense of purpose and worth deliberately ripped from them by a greedy and self-serving political party that is populated with persons who have used the downfall in black culture they have caused to feed their ravenous hunger for power. In the process not only have they destroyed the black culture, but the soul of their once proud political party as well.
    

The Race Card Is A Joker

     One of the favorite political ploys of Democrats is the employment of the Race Card. The functional use of which is based on the barbaric practice of slavery, ended by Republicans and the Christian Right 150 years ago. History matters little to Democrats, their intended political targets, or anyone else on the Left. What matters most is the Race Card's ability to verbally tar and feather anyone who opposes the imposition of their big government, liberty mitigating agenda designed to coral political power around themselves.
     The Race Card was first played by Democrats running against Abraham Lincoln in his bid for the presidency. They accused Honest Abe of having abolitionist sympathies to ruin any chance he had of garnering Southern votes. Back then, Democrats wore their racism proudly, not like today when they bury it under public policy that aims to convince blacks and whites that the former is incapable of achieving because of the latter. This necessitates the need for bigger federal programs designed to "level the playing field."
     The playing of the Race Card is easier for Democrats now that the only member of congress to have been a former member of the KKK, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, is deceased. The number of pretzels that Democrats from Senator Byrd himself to former President Bill Clinton, had to twist themselves into defending the good senator's racist past, would make Rold Gold jealous. Not to mention all the racist remarks made by Democrats from Harry Reid-"Barack is capable of slipping in and out of the negro dialect"- to Vice President Joe Biden-"Finally we have a clean, articulate black man we can run for president"- it is no wonder Democrats try to brand Republicans with the moniker of "racist" by employing the Race Card.
     Like they have done with the words rape, equality, sexist, and so many others, the Democrats have so expanded the definition of racism as to apply the term to anyone who disagrees with parts of their radical agenda that have nothing to do with the color of ones skin. And in so doing, the Race Card has become a joker. It is a placeholder to be used to represent any number of positions taken by those on the Left when they choose to have immunity from debate or close public inspection of their policies.
     I do not expect that Democrats will cease and desist from playing the Race Card anytime soon, essentially because it works. Until the mass of public opinion relegates the Race Card to the status of pariah on decent and moral public debate that it is, Democrats will continue to use it to try and rig the game of public policy in their favor. But the Democrats inability to defend their ideology without the bastardization of words like race, diminishes the unique tradition of American free speech and debate that the Founders of this great nation worked so hard to weave into the fabric of the free nation they created.
 

The Racism Of Inaction

     The current Nigerian problems with the radical Islamic group Boko Haram inside that country that threatens the Christian population can, at least in part, be attributable to what I have termed the Racism of Inaction. Racism of Inaction is an affliction whose causes are the pathogens of political correctness, and whose symptoms are an inability to assign accountability or criticism to certain protected groups of people. In some severe cases, Racism of Inaction can cause the afflicted to deny certain truths about individuals and groups which may be uncomfortable to acknowledge, or that may take courage to admit.
     The discussion in America seems to have centered around whether or not sending highly trained troops to Nigeria to find kidnapped girls is advisable. Or how the hash tag campaign #bringbackourgirls will melt the evil hearts of Boko Haram and cause them to sit down to tea with Michelle Obama in the Rose Garden of the White House and swap discrimination stories. The real crisis is who was the First Lady's target of the pathetic pleading hash tag anyway. Some on the Left have blamed the Christian Nigerian government for the kidnappings because the Racism of Inaction requires them to do so. Because not only is Boko Haram comprised of radical Islamists, but they are also black. Two victim groups for the price of one.
     Hillary Clinton suffered from Racism of Inaction a couple of years ago when the CIA, FBI, and her own State Department pleaded with her to classify Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. Which would have subjected them to financial and law enforcement remedies that may have slowed them down. Mrs. Clinton's bout of Racism of Inaction pleaded more vociferously than the tenets of reason, common sense, and decency. Which resulted in her refusal to violate her oath to the Leftist sacrament of victimology and innocence by virtue of race or radicalism, as long as the practitioners of such radicalism are not Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist. Or the individual of a protected race is not conservative.
     The shielding of criminal activity performed by members of certain groups considered put upon by bigoted cultures and others, has taken place in this country for many years, but has accelerated under the Obama administration and metastasized into Racism of Inaction. Attorney General Eric Holder had a fierce bout of the disease when he refused to prosecute members of The New Black Panther party who were caught on video threatening white voters in Philadelphia during the election of 2008. He had a further bout during the Treyvon Martin dust up when he turned a blind eye to that same group's death bounty placed on the head of George Zimmerman.
     The Racism of Inaction is the immunity from accountability based on one's race or religious/political persuasion, and it hides in the shadows of ignorance, dishonesty, and cowardice. It is an affliction which mostly affects those on the Left, but in recent years has spread to some on the Right. It is self-righteous indignation raised to the level of spiritual enlightenment, and true justice lowered to the insignificance of a get-out-of-jail-free card. The only known antidote to the Racism of Inaction is reason, common sense, and a strong mooring to the pylons of justice. Unfortunately those who now control our government are riddled with the disease and are terminal. The solution to the problem is simple, but not easy.We must elect leaders who judge actions and not skin color, who prosecute on violation of law not exonerate on racial or ethnic grievance, and who administer justice with a blindfold not a checklist of exemptions.    

Donald Sterling's Remarks And The Lefts Phony Outrage

     Not being a basketball fan, or really much of a sports fan at all, until the last few days I had no idea who Donald Sterling was. But even not knowing a lick about the decades-long Los Angeles Clippers owner, once the news broke about racist remarks he made in a phone call when he did not know he was being taped by his ex-girlfriend, I immediately knew he was a Democrat. The absence of his party affiliation in main stream news reports about his comments was typical behavior by a media that goes out of its way to report the political affiliation of those on the Right when they are caught in negative behavior, and the total lack of interest in such party alliances when the offender is anyone on the Left.
      The racist remarks by Mr. Sterling are equaled in their disgusting nature only by the manufactured outrage by those on the Left, especially in the world of sports. Holding the title of longest standing owner of an NBA team, Mr. Sterling's attitudes and bigotry was well known throughout his industry. Even those outside the industry of professional basketball knew of his racism, and yet it was ignored, even by the NAACP who just recently were going to bestow him with a lifetime achievement award. And what was his lifetime achievement in promoting the advancement of blacks? He gave a sizable donation to the organization.
     I do not share Mr. Sterling's feelings on race. However the real intolerability of this affair is the reaction by a Left wing that encourages racism with a wink and a nudge in private when it is proffered by their rich donors or political elite, and then engage in artificial disgust when such behavior is made public.
     Sometimes the Left can not even be bothered to manufacture phony outrage over racist comments uttered by their political royalty. Such was the case when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Barack Obama was special because he could seamlessly slip into a negro dialect when he had to. Or when Joe Biden said of Barack Obama, that in him the Democrat party finally had a clean, articulate black man running for president. Or when Bill Clinton, in trying to convince Ted Kennedy to swing his support from Barack Obama to Hillary, said to the late Senator that a few years ago Obama would have been serving them their coffee.
      The race whores in the Race Industrial Complex wasted no time jumping on Mr. Sterling's remarks to further their flailing electoral chances with a public that is growing weary of their destructive policies. The madam of the race industry's house of ill repute, Barack Obama, even took time out from his Asian tour to comment on the remarks of a private citizen back home. Mr. Obama is hard pressed and tight-lipped when it involves standing up against the evils of radical Islamic terrorism, but is quick to jump on the bus of racial divisiveness and ride it to the slaughterhouse of political advantage.     
     President Obama and his waning-in-support Democrat party are worried about polling that shows a lack of voting interest among their core constituencies of minorities and single women. So in these months before the mid-term elections this Fall, Americans can look forward to being pummeled with the dual mallets of race-baiting and The War on Women rhetoric. The speciousness of the Lefts reaction to the Donald Sterling comments are just the first salvo in what is sure to be a long and distasteful Democrat campaign to keep control of the United States Senate.

Supreme Court Gets This One Right

     This week, the Supreme Court upheld the state of Michigan's ban on Affirmative Action as a means of providing racial preference to students entering its universities. Justice Sotomayor, the wisest Latina woman in the world, dissented from the majority opinion of the court by making the incomprehensible comparison of it to the Jim Crow laws that Democrats passed in the South to discriminate against blacks. Proving once again that the Left is incapable, either by true ignorance or by deliberate purpose, to distinguish between race-based discrimination and race-based preference.
    The discriminatory practice of Affirmative Action was actually, and unfortunately, started by a Republicant, Richard M. Nixon. President Nixon formulated the Philadelphia Order, which gave preference to blacks based on race when companies filled construction positions. The goal was to stem the practice of some companies that refused to hire black workers based solely on their race. That "experiment" in Philadelphia morphed into federal policy over the years to become the largest government-sanctioned discrimination practice in history.
     One can hardly expect to solve discrimination against one group by transferring it to another. But as per usual in the Leftist ethos, advantage is not given to the most industrious or qualified, but a member of the victim class that belongs to the Democrat voting cabal. Preference for blacks based solely on their skin color should be as abhorrent to any decent minded person as discrimination against blacks based on skin color. But the Left daily pays disrespect to the brilliant and heartfelt words of the Reverend Martin Luther King, who lived and died to promote the ideal of "every man being judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin."
     Those on the Left turn the Reverend King's dream upside down, and 180 degrees out of phase, by wanting blacks and others to receive preferential treatment based not on the content of their character, but the color of their skin, ethnicity, sex, or any other physical attribute the Left can use to assign victim status. Once assigned and accepted, the victim group must then be "helped" by bigger government and more bureaucrats being hired at taxpayer expense to ensure "fairness."
     The real tragedy is that the evidence has shown that racial preference practices like Affirmative Action have actually hurt those they intended to help, as well as those not belonging to an elite victim group. Democrats have disadvantaged blacks through social programs that have destroyed their families, encouraged out-of-wedlock births, and taught their young men the ways of thuggery and irresponsibility. The solution, Democrats postulate, is then to create bigger government programs like Affirmative Action to help those they have disadvantaged, and the cycle continues.
     This week's Supreme Court decision is a small step in the right direction towards the Reverend King's dream of every man being judged on his own merit, and not by the color of his skin or ethnicity. A society and culture which encourages industry in the individual, and rewards the excellence of results, regardless of physical attributes, is inherently the fairest, most decent, and diverse system.    

The King Legacy

     Today we honor and remember the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., not only a champion of civil rights for blacks, but truly a great American who believed utmost in the Christian ideals, breathed to life by the birth of Jesus Christ and formed into a nation by our Founding Fathers. It was his belief in the sacred principles and values outlined in the founding documents of this country, and his mission to awaken the conscience of a nation to live those precepts more fully and completely, that distinguished him from so many "civil rights" leaders since.
      Martin Luther King Jr. began life as Michael King in 1929. His father, who was a minister, attended a Baptist conference in Nazi Germany in 1934. During that conference he was so inspired by the life and mission of the great German 16th century reformer, Martin Luther, that upon his return home he legally changed both his and his young son's name to Martin Luther King.
     Martin Luther King Jr., like Martin Luther King Sr., was a deeply spiritual man and was dedicated to non-violent change. In 1955, while attending a meeting at his local church, word came that his house had been fire bombed. He rushed home, concerned at first with the safety of his wife and small child, but after finding them safe, his concerns turned to the angry mob outside his home wanting vengeance. The potentially explosive situation that may have occurred between the partially armed mob and police was subdued when the Reverend King calmly walked out onto his front porch and silenced the crowd with his mere presence. He told them that violence would only hurt their cause and that they should follow the advice of the bible to meet hate with love. He told them to go home and put down their weapons, and they did. Such was the power to heal that the Reverend King possessed, not only for an angry mob, but a nation that had forgotten the better angels of its nature.
     A deliberate attempt by the media and others on the Left to diminish Reverend King's dedication to God, first and foremost, has taken place over the last few decades by their insistence on calling him Doctor King to the exclusion of calling him Reverend King.  Reverend King's ideal society where a man is judged, "not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character," has been turned on its head by modern "civil rights" leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whose aim it is to give special privilege based on skin color. And while the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. organized marches and boycotts to achieve justice for all men, I would not sully his name and memory by calling him a community organizer, that term having been so bastardized and corrupted by men like Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama.
     In this time when we must once again fight for true liberty and justice as Reverend King did almost 60 years ago, we would be heartened and wise to remember the reverend's message of non-violence and the eventual justice it can bring. In one of his famous speeches entitled How Long? Not Long. The Reverend King said, "the arc of the Universe is long, but it bends towards justice." We must always remember that the legacy of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was one of fidelity to God and his justice, which applies to all men regardless of skin color.
    

Inter-Generational Racial Victim Hood

     One of the Lefts favorite activities is accusing the Right of being racists, mostly to gain a political advantage with a woefully under-informed, and sometimes deliberately misinformed, public. But it is the Left that is obsessed with race, brandishing it like a nine millimeter hand gun every time a black youth is shot by police, in every election cycle, and whenever they perceive a chance to destroy someone who opposes their severely flawed ideology.
     Such was the case recently with comments made by Phil Robertson, patriarch of the Duck Dynasty family. His innocent comments about growing up in Louisiana in the 1960s among blacks, were called racist by an ever-increasingly hateful and irrational media and other Leftist devotees. Phil's comments that he never witnessed any discrimination against blacks growing up in the South, and that he worked along side many blacks hoeing the cotton fields and did not hear any of them express any concern about being the victims of racism, is illustrative of the Lefts "all or nothing" strategy when it comes to race.
     The narrative of the Left is that every white person in the South is a racist bigot and practices discrimination against any black person he can find. This narrative falls apart when one considers the post-Civil War Jim Crow Laws of the South. Why would laws need to be implemented to get persons to do that which they are already doing on their own? But the actual facts or truth will not stop a committed Leftist from proffering their own version of reality to push an agenda based on their own bigotry of those with whom they disagree. And Mr. Robertson's own life experience must be sublimated to the Lefts agenda and the narrative used to impose it. This is not to say there were not racists in the South that discriminated against blacks, they were called Democrats.
    The Left has also manufactured inter-generational racial victim hood i.e., because you may have had an ancestor that was a victim of racism, you are automatically a victim as well and should receive special treatment and compensation. This has been a deliberate strategy by the Left to offer themselves as the only remedy for the alleged racial offense, thus giving Leftist politicians power and authority that the United States Constitution never envisioned. But this kind of racial pandering has only served to injure the intended beneficiaries with higher high school and college drop-out rates, twice the unemployment rate of the general population, and the almost complete destruction of the black family structure.
     So as many in the black population have been deliberately distracted to think that they are victims of conservative white policy (if such a thing exists), the real source of their victimization is Leftist social policies that have aimed to keep them on the Democrat plantation of low expectations and unlimited entitlement that are born of never-ending victim hood.

The Modern Day Civil Rights Industry Needs Racism

     The modern day civil rights industry has gone from obtaining previously denied Constitutional rights for minorities, which was achieved decades ago, to teaching minorities how to be offended by words, ideas and symbols. The legislation of the 1960s and 1970s, which guaranteed equal rights for women and minorities, does not have to be re-legislated every generation as the Left seems to want to do. The signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Act by President Obama early in his first term is a good example of legislation which will never help one person it purports to, unless that person is a plaintiff's attorney.
     Legislative efforts like Lilly Ledbetter are designed to increase not only the window of time one has to sue if they feel they have suffered discrimination, but the very "acts of discrimination" which become a violation of law. These "acts of discrimination" in modern times have encompassed not only what someone does, which previously defined when a law was broken, but what they think as well. The almost Orwellian nature of so-called "hate crimes laws" is exemplary of how far down the road of statism we have progressed as a culture. Our founders could not have imagined a country where a person could be charged with a violation of law simply for what they think.
     The recent Supreme Court's reversal of part of the Voting Rights Act of the 1960s was blasted by the Left as a grave injustice and a sure return to the Jim Crow South. But in reality, the part of the law dismissed was unfair to certain states in the South that were being punished by the law because of what happened in those states in the distant past. Truth be told, the Jim Crow laws of the South were not a function of a majority of Southerners being racists, but of the prejudice and bigotry of the Democrat politicians who passed them. If the general population and business owners were racists and acting accordingly, there would have been no need for laws to force them into behavior in which they were already engaged.
     Just as white, Southern Democrat politicians used their power to impose laws that discriminated against blacks in the so-called Jim Crow South, modern day race industry participants like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Barrack Obama and others, have used their influence and power to perpetuate the façade of endemic racism in this country. To admit that any significant progress has been made in racial discrimination over the last fifty years, like lifting the punishment on Southern states imposed by the Voting Rights Act, would be to signal the death knell for the "civil rights leaders" who have become wealthy by trying to extend that punishment to the widest swath of American public life as possible.

The Irony Of King Anniversary

     It was somewhat ironic that in the almost dozen media reports that I heard yesterday on the fiftieth anniversary of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, very few actually replayed any portion of the actual speech that inspired the remembrance. They did, however, pay sycophant homage to Barack Obama with excerpts from his rather lackluster speech from the steps of the Lincoln memorial, where the media made very clear, was the exact spot Reverend King made his inspiring speech fifty years ago.
   It was also ironic that Barack Obama made his speech in the same spot that Reverend King made his, ironic because there could not be more of a chasm of values and beliefs between two men, than there is between Barack Obama and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. The Reverend King, who the media and the Left call Doctor King because they value a man of academe more than a man of God, had very conservative values which one can see illustrated, not only in his "Dream" speech, but in others as well. In the Reverend's "Dream" speech he talks about a man being judged by the content of his character and not by the color of his skin. But it is Barack Obama and others on the Left that have worked hard the last fifty years to institutionalize the favorable judgment of blacks and other minorities based solely on skin color and not on the content of their character.
     The other thing that struck me as ironic about President Obama's speech was his retelling of people seeing their loved ones beaten and fire hosed because of their desire for equality. The President failed to mention that the people who ordered the fire hoses to be used and the beatings to be implemented to stop marchers, were Democrats. Bull Connor, who used his dogs against civil rights marchers, was a Democrat. The people blocking access to all white schools to bar black children from receiving an education there, were Democrats. The racist Jim Crow laws instituted in the South were legislated by Democrat politicians. And it was Democrats in the United States Congress that tried to block the 1964 landmark civil rights legislation from passing, and it was only because a majority of Republicans voted for it that it did pass. In fact, Al Gore's father, Al Gore Sr., lead a filibuster in the Senate to try and stop the civil rights legislation from becoming the law of the land.
     And finally, it is ironic that it has been the ideology of people like Barack Obama that has caused more unemployment in the black community since Reverend King made his speech, almost double what it was then. It is also the Leftist policies of Barack Obama and others that have directly lead to an out-of-wedlock birthrate in the black community that is three times what it was when Reverend King made his speech as well as the very despicable and heartbreaking statistic that 43% of black children are being murdered through abortion. Leftist policies have also been responsible for inner-city crime and violence that has young black men killing each other at an alarming rate because these same policies have destroyed the black family. Reverend King could not have imagined the moral decay in the black community inspired by people who would invoke his name to advance the policies that have caused it. The race profiteers like Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who enrich themselves while they impoverish the black community, are the very kind of people that the Reverend King would be marching against today if he were alive.

The Racism Of Voter ID Opposition

     Recently, a link to a video was sent to me that depicted a black woman retelling a story of alleged racism she experienced at a Safeway grocery store while shopping with, what she called, "her white-looking sister in-law." This video had the racist title of, "One easy thing all white people can do to make the world a better place." I say it was racist because it assumes that the environment that makes life difficult for people, especially for those that are black or belong to another minority group, is caused exclusively by white people and it is their behavior that must be changed to resolve the perceived racism. It has been the race profiteers like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Barack Obama that have made themselves wealthy and powerful by inculcating in the members of their community the notion that their status as an authentic black depends on having a racial discrimination story similar to the woman in the video I alluded to earlier.
     The recent manufactured racial issue of voter ID laws is illustrative of the stoking of the racial fires done by those who profit off such divisions. The pros of voter ID laws have been discussed to death. They run the gamut from protecting the legitimacy of the voting process to benefiting holders of such IDs in many other areas of their daily lives. The only argument against voter ID seems to be that it is considered by those in the race business to be discriminatory. But in order for a law or policy to be discriminatory, it needs to require that of a particular group of people which is not required of the general population, or it needs to exclude those of a certain group from that which others are not excluded. Under any sensible definition of discrimination, voter ID laws do not qualify as discriminatory. Blacks and other minorities are not being required to provide any information that every other voter in states with such laws are required to provide.
     The real racist and discriminatory position on voter ID laws is the one occupied by those who are against them. They are, in essence, saying that they do not want blacks and other minorities to obtain IDs that would help them cash checks at a bank, have access to airline tickets and a myriad other activities in our society that require some sort of ID. The opponents of voter ID laws are also saying, by their position, that blacks and other minorities are in some way less capable than whites in procuring a driver's license or state ID. This is ridiculous, especially since the states that have voter ID laws also offer IDs absolutely free, some states will even send someone to a person's home to sign them up for an ID.
     Finally, if voter ID laws are so discriminatory, why do all the countries that the Left says we should emulate, have them? All of Europe, and much of the rest of the industrialized world, require their citizens to prove who they are, via some sort of an official ID, before they vote. But those on the Left, and especially in the Democrat party, desire to not only perpetuate the voter fraud that helps them win elections, but they also aim to keep one of their key constituencies from freeing themselves from the plantation of ignorance, dependency and societal marginalization.  

The Deliberate Disconnect Of Blacks From American History

     Recently, a friend of mine took his family on vacation to colonial Williamsburg and was recounting the rich American history that resided there to one of his inner-city tenants. This twenty-something black mother of three looked at my friend and said, "That kind of stuff is only for rich white people, and besides I would never have the money to afford a trip like that anyway." Her statement revealed two tragedies of the modern black experience in America. One, the disconnect from her own history, and two, the hopelessness that she will never attain even a modest level of success and prosperity. Both of these aspects have been deliberately inculcated in her by politicians whose Leftist ideology has destroyed this young woman and her community.
     These two aspects of the modern black experience revealed by this young woman's statement are not simply a happenstance. But rather, they are the carefully planned and executed political strategy by the Left over the last few decades to detach blacks from their history and their hope for a better life so that they will forever be dependent on the programs that are administered by power hungry politicians and bureaucrats. One of the most heart-breaking and destructive aspects of Leftism is that it convinces its victims to believe lies about themselves and their worth to their communities and their nation but worst of all to themselves.
     The disconnection of blacks from their American history is a corollary to the multi-culturalism cancer that has spread through much of the world and has left many countries without the thread of a common past, culture or goals that ties them together. In the United States, the purveyors of the multi-cultural disease have been rewriting history to advance the false narrative that the United States of America was founded, and has existed, on greed, racism and bigotry. This bastardized history has been taught to several generations of children, especially black children, who then feel no pride in or connection to the country in which they live. And of course this creates the environment for Leftist politicians to advance their oppressive big government programs for the purpose of creating some sort of retribution through redistribution.
     The second aspect of my friend's young tenant's statement is a close companion to the deliberate disconnection of blacks from their American culture, the breaking down of their self confidence and the self reliance that results from it. People who are self reliant have much less need for government than those who lack the necessary skills to fulfill the basic responsibilities of life. The Democrat party and other Leftists have spent the last half century convincing blacks that because of the history of America, they have no ability to change their lives, or even subsist of their own accord, and must therefore depend on the Leftists big government programs.
     The entire political fortunes of the Democrat party, and Leftists in general, depend on people not being able to take care of themselves. So they gobble up the talents, hopes, dreams and ambitions of those most vulnerable and spit them back in the form of oppressive government programs that limit the individual spirit from soaring as high as it can, therefore damaging the entire community. This is the tragedy that is Leftism and the criminality of those who are its practitioners. 

Eric Holder's Decriminalization Of Black Crime

     For the umpteenth time, the Obama administration's strict adherence to a rigorously Leftist ideology has trumped any respect for the law, this time in the person of Attorney General, Eric Holder. The severely rule of law-challenged Holder has decided that he and the United States Attorneys under his command, will no longer enforce the mandatory minimum criminal penalties as they apply to crack and powder cocaine offenses. The reason for the Attorney General violating his oath to uphold the law of the land is that he says it is racist because a disproportionate number of blacks are charged under it than whites. Never mind that according to the Constitution of the United States, the Attorney General has no authority to dismiss laws, in part or in whole, from being enforced. The real dichotomy is that the mandatory minimum penalties for crack and powder cocaine are similar in nature to those for methamphetamine, which results in crimes that are committed almost entirely by white offenders. Those mandatory minimums will, of course, continue to be enforced.
     The Attorney General repeated the same myth used by pro-criminal advocates, i.e., our prisons are filled with non-violent offenders who are drug users, mainly of marijuana. The data from Eric Holder's own Justice Department shows that the vast majority of those in prison for drug crimes are major traffickers or those engaged in violent crimes while in possession of drugs. The Obama administration has already increased the amount of crack cocaine that one must be in possession of before they are charged with a major felony by a factor of 25. Drug offenders are not a majority of the prison populations in this country as criminal advocates would have us believe. In fact, only twenty percent of those incarcerated in state prisons are there as a result of drug felonies. Only seventeen percent of those twenty percent have been convicted of crimes involving marijuana. And only three tenths of one percent of those charged with marijuana crimes are non-violent possession cases. But the Attorney General, the President and other criminal advocates would have us believe that the country's prisons are bursting at the seams with people who were caught simply toking a joint on a Saturday night in the wrong place at the wrong time.
     Attorney General Holder supported his position to ignore the law by saying that those caught in the harsh mandatory minimum sentencing for crack and powder cocaine are usually black, and because of that fact the supposition can be arrived at that the criminal justice system in this country is racist. The Attorney General and others are actually hurting the black community at large, from which the innocent victims of the criminals Mr. Holder is trying to protect are culled. Instead of decriminalizing black crime, the Attorney General, the President and other advocates should address the issues which cause it. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among the inner city black population is 75% and unemployment is at a similarly high rate. But the remedies of Leftists like Mr. Holder only perpetuate the pain for those they claim to want to help.
     When the Attorney General characterizes the U.S. prison system as some sort of receptacle for the discarded black youths of a racist society, once again the data does not support his position. Half of all those in prison are Hispanic. No one, even the most ardent advocates for the criminal element in this country, are saying that the large number of blacks in prison are innocent of the crimes of which they have been charged. What the advocates and Eric Holder are suggesting, is that somehow by decriminalizing certain illegal behaviors, it will bring down the crime rate in predominantly black neighborhoods. But as bloviating Leftists like the President and Attorney General Holder will point to their policy of simply ignoring certain crimes as achieving a lower crime rate, the increased number of victims of those crimes will continue to live in fear and find no representation in their government or civic leaders.

Verdict No End For Zimmerman

     Usually when someone is accused of a crime and submits to the rigors of a trial, the matter is settled one way or another with the announcement of a verdict. The person pays the penalty for the crime if found guilty, or picks up their life where they left off if found not guilty. In the case of George Zimmerman, the most well-known neighborhood watch guard by now, the Left will make sure he never spends another day on this earth without threat to his life, liberty or pursuit of happiness. And even though he was found not guilty, Mr. Zimmerman will spend the rest of his life in the prison of the Lefts demonization.
     More to the point, the community agitator President, through his corrupt Attorney General, will seriously consider, and may file, civil rights charges against George Zimmerman for defending himself from someone who practically beat him unconscious before he shot and killed him. Well known terrorist expert and former federal prosecutor, most notably for a successful prosecution of the Blind Sheik for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Andrew McCarthy, has said that a civil rights violation against George Zimmerman for killing Treyon Martin is ludicrous and unlikely to be successful.
     The reason a civil rights violation will be hard for the government to prove is that to do so would entail two burdens of proof. First, the government must prove that George Zimmerman had some racial animus toward Treyvon Martin because of his race, and two, that that animus lead Mr. Zimmerman to deliberately deny Treyvon of a federally-protected civil right. All the evidence seems to suggest that neither one of these conditions could successfully be met. Mr. Zimmerman was certainly not a racist, after all he tutored black children and took a black girl to his high school prom. But of course, none of this will matter to the activists in and out of government. When one is a committed Leftist, truth is a casualty of an ideology which is fueled by the hatred of constant victimization for the purpose of curtailing liberty to empower government.
     I witnessed one of the "demonstrations" yesterday that were meant to show dissatisfaction with the not guilty verdict in the Zimmerman trial. With the President and others calling for calm and non-violence, it was illustrative of the difference between the Left and the Right. Had the verdict been decided the other way, there would have been no need for people like the President to call for non-violence. That is because those on the Right believe in the rule of law that sees that each man accused of a crime has his day in court and a jury of his peers decides from the evidence if he is guilty or not. The Left believes only in the rule of chaos, and the more they can create to obfuscate truth, reason and fact, the better their chances of imposing their will over the law. The Lefts temper tantrum over the George Zimmerman verdict is exemplary of their disdain for the American justice system and the rule of law that created it.

The Zimmerman Verdict

     When I first heard that the jury in the George Zimmerman trial had found him not guilty late Saturday night, I was surprised. But then, from the beginning, everything about this unfortunate incident has been a surprise. And the fact that my surprise over a not guilty verdict was only surpassed by my non-surprise over the predictable reaction of the race-baiting Left throughout this excruciating ordeal that they have impose upon the nation, is evidentiary of the Lefts desire to retard any growth toward racial maturity in this country.
     The prosecution's case against Mr. Zimmerman presented during his trial was exemplary of what happens when law and reason are replaced with race-baiting and manufactured emotion. After George Zimmerman shot Treyvon Martin while on neighborhood watch in February of 2012, local officials examined the evidence carefully and decided that Mr. Zimmerman acted in self-defense and that prosecution of any charges against him was not warranted by the evidence. Months later when the story was picked up by national media outlets, the flames of an emotional outburst were fanned by every racial opportunist from the lowest community agitator all the way up to the highest levels of the federal government.
     When the embers over George Zimmerman having shot Treyvon Martin were just beginning to glow, Eric Holder used taxpayer money to pay for demonstrations in Sanford, Florida, ostensibly for the cause of "justice." And once Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton mobilized their race-baiting machines, George Zimmerman did not stand a chance of ever being able to return to a normal life. The local community agitators and the national bullies like Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson were joined in their bullying by the Agitator in Chief, Barack Obama. President Obama's statement that if he had a son, he would look like Treyvon, was both racist and meant to be inflammatory. Treyvon did not look anything like President Obama and the only commonality between the two was their race and their sex.
     The manufactured "public outrage" over an unarmed black teenager being shot by a Hispanic man who the media tried hard to characterize as white, was enough to bully local prosecutors to bring charges against Mr. Zimmerman. But for George Zimmerman, the fact that a jury used testimony, evidence and critical thinking to acquit him of murder charges, does not mitigate the damage done to his reputation and hopes to live a normal life by the race profiteers and their useful idiots in the media. Mr. Zimmerman will not go to prison for defending himself, but he must now live his life as though he had. He will forever be the prisoner of the small-minded ideals of people like Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

The Lefts Selective Outrage Over Paula Dean

     Recently Paula Dean, celebrity chef and cooking products retailer, admitted in a deposition that she had used the dreaded 'N' word thirty years ago as she was being robbed at gun point. The fact that the Left has kept our culture mired in a past where that word maintains an overwhelming offensiveness, is the topic for another post. The recent admission by Paula Dean, and the Lefts complete hysteria over it, is illustrative of the Lefts inability and unwillingness to allow average Americans to decide for themselves what is offensive and what is not and whether the purveyor of the alleged offense should be punished in some way.
     In a free and fair society, the "offense" by Paula Dean would have been evaluated by the free market and any punishment would have been meted out by the consumers of Paula Dean's products. But the free market scares the Left because it puts the power to decide non-criminal offenses in the hands of average people, away from the strict and intolerant court of the Lefts radical ideology. The arrogance of the Left is that they think without imposing their radical agenda on a woefully unsophisticated public, that public would never know that they had been offended, and would not show the proper outrage over that offense.
     The Left has been very successful in training people to self-censor, mainly through their invention of political correctness, which limits free speech in areas for which the Left knows they have no truth-based, substantive arguments. This was the case with Paula Dean's employers and sponsors. They did not drop the celebrity chef because they felt her admission would hurt ratings of her show or sales of her products. They did not even drop her because they themselves were offended by her use of the 'N' word thirty years ago. They dropped her because they were afraid if they did not, there would be a gaggle of community agitators demonstrating at their door step and a complicit media intimating that they were as rabid racists as Paula herself.
     The real irony of the Paula Dean incident is that there is probably not a person alive in this country, over the age of 30, who has not used that word at sometime in their life. Rappers and others in the black community use the 'N' word almost without restraint. If the word is offensive, its offense should be drawn from its use, not the color of the user's skin. But that is the core dishonesty of the Left, their selective outrage over an alleged offense based on the offenders race or the area of the country from which she originates. And they use that selectivity to punish those they have determined to be members of the predator class and reward those they have deemed members of the victim class.