Category: Society

Instead of uniting America, Democrats have been hard at work dividing us into superficially recognizable groups for decades. It’s now reached the point where we can hear the clucking of the chickens as they come home to roost. In the Wall Street Journal, Jerry Bowyer writes that it is most visible in the upcoming Democrat primary in Pennsylvania;

 One in five supporters of Mrs. Clinton here say they won’t vote for Mr. Obama should their candidate lose (and vice versa, according to pollster Terry Madonna of Franklin & Marshall College). Only 12% of nonwhite Pennsylvania voters support Mrs. Clinton. Only 29% of white ones support Mr. Obama. Gender and age cohorts break along similarly sharp lines, with women and older voters going for Mrs. Clinton, men and young voters trending toward Mr. Obama.

As a student of political history, I see these poll results as something deeper than a passing nomination squabble. For at least 40 years, Democrats have been playing identity politics and empowering factional blocs within their party.

Though others might pick a different starting point, I’d trace the start of that process to 1968 Chicago, where antiwar protestors rioted outside of the party’s national convention and party leaders inside responded by creating the McGovern-Fraser commission. That commission went on to write presidential nomination rules establishing delegate quotas based on age, race and gender. State parties followed suit by structuring caucuses to favor organized activist groups such as unions.

And so now Pennsylvania Democrats, like their brethren around the country, are splitting along race, age, gender and geographical lines as they are forced to choose between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. But then, why shouldn’t they? Democratic voters are just doing what they’ve been trained to do – thinking of themselves in group terms.

Yesterday, one commenter on this blog tried to make a point that the US is less “progressive” than other countries because we haven’t elected a woman as our head-of-state. More identity politics. Instead of picking the best person for the job, we should select our presidents based on accidents of birth, by the randomness of nature. I guess we all know for whom that commenter is voting – solely based on the fact that we’ve never had a woman president.

The same goes for most of the residents of Washington, DC who declare almost daily that they’re voting for the first Black president. Never mind that he’s an incompetent boob running one of the most juvenile campaigns ever in American politics. It’s the same way DC residents have chose their mayors for decades – irrespective of the candidates being unqualified to the point of being criminals.

Just browsing through the comments at my YouTube video of David Bellavia’s speech to the gathering of Vets for Freedom last Tuesday, I find adherents to the Obama doctrines nearly as disturbing as the acolytes of Ron Paul last year. Obama’s only qualification for president seems to be that he’s Black (to some degree) and somehow that qualifies his supporters as some sort arbiters of the use of our language when talking about politics.

Well, this is the bed Democrats have made for themselves and, judging by the campaign in Pennsylvania, they’re having a hard time laying in it.

Photo from Reuters

Elton John greets racists

That great political philosopher, Elton John, has decided that only misogyny will keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House (AP/Yahoo link);

British pop star Elton John, playing a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton in New York on Wednesday, said he was amazed at the misogyny of some in America and he hoped that wouldn’t stop her being president.

At the fund-raiser which Clinton’s campaign manager said raised $2.5 million, John said there was no one more qualified to lead the United States into the next era.

“Having said that, I never cease to be amazed at the misogynistic attitude of some people in this country. And I say to hell with them,” he said, drawing cheers from the crowd at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan.

“The reason I’m here tonight is to play music, but more importantly as someone who comes from abroad, and is in America quite a lot of the time (and) is extremely interested in the political process because it effects the whole world.”

“I’ve always been a Hillary supporter,” he said.

As usual, foreigners always miss the point. American voters look for the best person for the job, without regard to superficial accidents of birth. A vote against Hillary is vote against back-stabbing, lying, cheating skulduggery.

Of course we can’t expect the rest of the world to understand that – they just want the US candidate that’ll fly bags of money into their respective countries and apologize for things we’ve never done. Hillary seems most likely to do that for them.

I guess we could say something about John’s support for Hillary being racist, but we won’t – oh, sorry, I just did.

I met Juan Williams once as we were both scurrying off to lunch at Union Station in Washington DC several years ago. Despite our polar-opposite political views, I found him quite amiable. We only spoke briefly, mostly about his and my wife’s shared Panamanian heritage. Because of that pleasant encounter, I’ve always struggled to give him the benefit of the doubt on his views. I read his book “Eyes on the Prize” and found him to be more rational than most on race.

Today he has an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Obama and King“. First, Williams presented a picture of the Civil Rights movement that I remember;

While speaking to black people, King never condescended to offer Rev. Wright-style diatribes or conspiracy theories. He did not paint black people as victims. To the contrary, he spoke about black people as American patriots who believed in the democratic ideals of the country, in nonviolence and the Judeo-Christian ethic, even as they overcame slavery, discrimination and disadvantage. King challenged white America to do the same, to live up to their ideals and create racial unity. He challenged white Christians, asking them how they could treat their fellow black Christians as anything but brothers in Christ.

When King spoke about the racist past, he gloried in black people beating the odds to win equal rights by arming “ourselves with dignity and self-respect.” He expressed regret that some black leaders reveled in grievance, malice and self-indulgent anger in place of a focus on strong families, education and love of God. Even in the days before Congress passed civil rights laws, King spoke to black Americans about the pride that comes from “assuming primary responsibility” for achieving “first class citizenship.”

Then Williams contrasted what the civil rights movement was with what it’s become;

But as his campaign made headway with black voters, Mr. Obama no longer spoke about the responsibility and the power of black America to appeal to the conscience and highest ideals of the nation. He no longer asks black people to let go of the grievance culture to transcend racial arguments and transform the world.

He has stopped all mention of government’s inability to create strong black families, while the black community accepts a 70% out-of-wedlock birth rate. Half of black and Hispanic children drop out of high school, but he no longer touches on the need for parents to convey a love of learning to their children. There is no mention in his speeches of the history of expensive but ineffective government programs that encourage dependency. He fails to point out the failures of too many poverty programs, given the 25% poverty rate in black America.

And he chooses not to confront the poisonous “thug life” culture in rap music that glorifies drug use and crime.

Instead the senator, in a full political pander, is busy excusing Rev. Wright’s racial attacks as the right of the Rev.-Wright generation of black Americans to define the nation’s future by their past. He stretches compassion to the breaking point by equating his white grandmother’s private concerns about black men on the street with Rev. Wright’s public stirring of racial division.

Williams, of course hits the nail squarely on the head. When Jesse Jackson was seeking the Democrat nomination in 1984, I once saw him tell Black grade school students that no one would give them anything – that they’d have to study hard and work hard for everything they have. I know that seems like a dream now compared to today’s Jesse Jackson. Of course, I now realize that Jackson was just playing the media, the same as Obama is playing the media today.

Booker T. Washington once said;

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

Dr. King was a puller, what is Barak Obama?