If Falsely Accused of Racism You Had Better Not Work for Obama

A short video of Shirley Sherrod, the Georgia Director of Rural Development, made the rounds on YouTube on Monday and seemed to imply she was a racist.  She was forced to resign from the Agricultural Department on Monday as the result of three phone calls made by Cheryl Cook, the USDA's deputy undersecretary, who stated that the White House demanded her immediate resignation.  In the video, Sherrod had stated that she made less than her full effort to save the farm of a white farmer in Georgia from foreclosure.  The video was a snippet of a talk she gave to a local Georgia chapter of the NAACP back in 1986.  In the rest of the talk, she had told the story of how she had come to realize while helping the white farmer that race was not the issue.  The farmer's wife came out on Tuesday with the dismayed statement that Sherrod had played a critical role in saving their farm from foreclosure and was forever her friend.

On Monday, the President of the national NAACP, Benjamin Todd Jealous, called for Sherrod's resignation because the NAACP has a zero tolerance policy for racism.  This followed closely on the heels of Jealous calling the Tea Party movement racist.  On Tuesday, the NAACP changed its mind, when someone finally checked on the testimony of Eloise Spooner, the farmer's wife.  The NAACP blamed Fox News and Tea Party activist Andrew Breitbart for their error, despite the fact that the NAACP had the complete speech given by Sherrod in their possession and could have reviewed it before calling for her resignation.  Fox News did not have that complete video.  Finally, the media also talked to Sherrod, which the White House was unwilling to do.  But, on Tuesday, the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, defended his demands for Sherrod's immediate resignation.  He made it clear he is afraid of rumors of racism.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, that maven of careful fact-checking of the left, laughed that Fox News had covered the Sherrod incident and had not early picked up on the problem with the out-of-context video clip.  Neither had the other news outlets who covered the story on Monday.  Yet, according to Maddow, Fox News alone caused Sherrod to be "fired."  Fox News was only one of many to initially get the story wrong.  This is not good, but neither is it good for Maddow to follow up an out-of-context story by trying to turn it into another out-of-context story.  This just makes her a laughingstock.  It is not the first time.

More damning yet, how could the White House call upon a federal employee to resign without even listening to her side of the story first?  What kind of jerk employer would call for a resignation and never bother to check into the context of an accusation?  If Fox News was at fault, at least it might have been alerting people about a matter that needed further looking into.  The White House and the Secretary of Agriculture should have done that looking into it before asking for a resignation.  And having made a colossal mistake, they should be prepared to admit it now.

Who does Shirley Sherrod blame for her "firing?"  She blames the White House and the NAACP.  Strangely enough, she is not blaming Fox News.  She says the NAACP's high profile claims that the Tea Party movement is racist caused them to prematurely call for her resignation.  One might expect that opposition to racism should be based on a concept of justice, but it is now clear that both the NAACP and the White House are sadly deficient in the concept of justice.

Declaring our Independence from the Progressive Aristocracy

The Progressive (Liberal, Socialist) elitists have become an aristocracy who rule, manage, and manipulate the remainder of Americans who are supposedly no more than organic bits of various special interest groups or factions.

The Progressives have long insisted that man's nature could evolve rapidly with proper indoctrination in the government-run schools to engineer American youth who hold socialist values.  Some of the indoctrinated would prove suitable to be selected as the new members of the aristocracy, but most would just be trained to be docile followers.  The government-run schools reflect this philosophy, with many schools being little more than holding cells to train the inmates in being members of an underclass and in doing as they are told by authorities.  Some schools have effective multiple tracks and some few produce many future Progressive elitists.  These indoctrinated youth are then to vote democratically to further enlarge government.

The old American tradition, stated in the Declaration of Independence, in which the only legitimate purpose of government is to protect the equal, sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the enemy of progress in their viewpoint.  This traditional American viewpoint necessitates a very limited government and a very dynamic private sector, where everyone has an equal right to exercise his choices and to find others who will associate or trade with him for a given purpose in a voluntary activity.  That limited government was provided for by the Constitution.  The Progressives claim these traditional, but radical, American ideals deny the science of history.  They have pointed to a long history of governments around the world always trying to expand their powers and usually succeeding in doing so.  They have claimed that history is a march of progress, so if many governments have succeeded in expanding their powers, this must be what progress is and progress must be good.  These governments with expanded powers need to be directed by energetic leaders who will not shrink from using force to promote the General Welfare, which is always found in the organic expression of shared democratic will.  The government tells the people what their rights are.  Those suitable for leadership are those most indoctrinated and knowledgeable about the goals of socialism.  These leaders are the graduates of the right colleges and are those who are well-connected in the network of Progressive activists.

The Progressives look down on people who produce goods and services in the free market and are paid with money.  They believe those who serve have a higher moral status, even if those who serve do so as government employees and are well paid with taxes levied mostly on the producers and taken from the producers under the threat of force.  The producers are evil because they use resources of the earth such as materials, because they change the earth, and because they pander to individuals acting on their individual goals and needs.  The Progressives believe that when the individual is subsumed by some group or other, the individual has become an organic part of a greater whole.  They believe there is some higher ideal reached whenever the individuality of the individual is diminished.  But Progressives do not have a very high regard for the ability of most people to choose their own values and then to manage their own lives in accordance with those values.  Indeed, they find the very idea of such an expression of individuality to be abhorrent.  If people were actually to do any such thing, the government would not be able to satisfy them with its central planning efforts.  The people must be taught to identify themselves with one group or even a number of different groups, so the Progressives and government can deal with the easier problem of just dealing with this much smaller number of groups.

Once the people are just so many groups or special interests, or factions, then the democratic process can be used to sort out who the winners and losers will be.  Of course, this results in quite a bit of a free-for-all, but that is why the elitist Progressives are needed as leaders and controllers of the governments.  They are the parents watching over the children squabbling over the toys in the sandbox and setting the rules of play.  The elite Progressives make the laws and regulations in government as the democratic rulers.  So, Progressives tend to flock to government positions because that is where the real action is.  They shun the private sector and they grow the public sector.  The game is in fact one of redistributing the wealth produced by the private sector through their hands in government and handing it out to grateful groups who will vote for them, give them money, and sing their praises. 

Of course, these leaders are so important to the cause of Progressivism, that it is perfectly reasonable for them to use their power to extort those in the private sector with threats to do them harm, unless the leaders are given enough money for their re-election campaigns ad nauseam.  Or, these leaders offer factions favorable legislation in exchange for re-election campaign backing, as they do to labor unions, teachers, trial lawyers, and many Wall Street investment firms.  These Progressive government employees are the new aristocracy.  Like the aristocracy of old, they control the levers of power to do whatever they want as they manipulate the peasants and give them just enough to keep them from rebelling.  At least this is how it has often worked in the past and it is how they believe it is supposed to be working now.

The Progressive elite is now furious.  Many of the peasants are revolting.  This is how they see the Tea Party protesters.  Their response has been one of utter hatred.  The hatred is so strong, that they describe the Tea Party rebels with all the words they have long associated with evil or disdain.  So, the Tea Party rebels must be racists.  They must be ignorant.  They must be trailer trash. The Progressives know this to be so, because the peasants must be evil to rebel against the progress of history and the evolution of society.

The Tea Party activists are not evil.  Mostly, they are American individualists who have finally taken notice that Progressivism is an attack upon their individuality.  It is an attempt to dictate to them what their personal values will be.  It is an attempt to micromanage their lives.  It is a refusal to recognize them as individuals.  It is a thorough-going attack upon the very idea that they have sovereign and unalienable rights which are not given to them by government.  It is an attack on the idea that legitimate government exists to protect the equal rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The Tea Party protesters are sick of the attacks on the productive Americans to force them to forever subsidize less productive Americans and illegal aliens.  They are sick of the transfer of wealth from the private sector to the public sector.  They are sick of the transformation of their personal choices in the private sector to democratic and factional choices in the public sector.  They are tired of being ignored and denigrated.  They are tired of an aristocracy of bureaucrats, politicians, college professors, and media people who look upon them as peasants.  They are sure that they are competent to choose their own values.  They know they are able to manage their own lives and make their own choices.  They have awakened to the fact that it is the free market that provides them with these choices and the opportunity to express themselves as individuals.  They are coming to understand that they have made themselves the individuals they are in large part and they want to continue to be in control of the development of their own character and that of their children.

A choice has to be made about the purpose and scope of government.  Our Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution chose very limited government consistent with the viewpoint that the General Welfare of the People who institute government was best served when government's function and scope was to simply protect the equal, sovereign, inalienable right of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The individual American was seen as capable of choosing his own values and of managing his own life.  Freedoms such as freedom of speech, of press, and of assembly would allow any American to develop his knowledge, his judgment, and his character.  Americans had the freedom to work and to own property and the income from their work.  When an American individual wanted to work with others for a common goal, he could arrange that using his many freedoms of association and contract in the free market.  There he would have a plethora of choices and ample expression of his individuality.  The interests of many individuals could be worked out in great harmony in the private sector.  While our government had a measure of democracy in the choosing of its leaders, that democracy was constrained by the Constitution, which gave us a representative limited government.  This government of limited powers had a further balance of power within the branches of the government and between the federal government and the states that required a strong consensus to be developed before the federal government could act.  The power of government was to be limited, so that the warfare among factions would be limited.  Too powerful a government led to too many factions being created.  These factions then would fight too viciously for too much power.  In that environment, the rights of the individual could not be equally protected and they would not even be protected.  The General Welfare and the peace and tranquility of the nation would be damaged by such factional squabbles over the exercise of government power.  The antithesis of this American viewpoint is Progressivism, which is largely a European import.

Now consider what we have seen.  We have a Progressive government, which very little constrains itself in accordance with the Constitution.  We have top leaders who are disdainful of the People.  We have top leaders who have said they disagree with the Constitution and its limits on their power.  We have top leaders who tell us we only have the rights the government gives us.  It is clear this government is a Progressive government.  So, I ask you:

• Have we seen government serving the best interests of the American people (the General Welfare) with minimal factionalism and a great tranquility of our society?
• Do we see evidence that Americans have evolved such characters that they have lost their individuality and are willing to submerge themselves in a Hegelian whole of society? 
• Have we seen solid evidence that the Progressive ruling elite is able to choose our values for us better than we can choose them ourselves?
• Have we seen a powerful government evolve which wisely micromanages our lives?
• Have we seen this government make centrally planned economic decisions which are wise?
• Have we seen this government responsibly manage its finances and minimize the debt to be passed on to later generations?
• Do we like what we see in Europe so much that we agree that their way is superior to the American way of life?

I submit to you that the answer to each of these questions is NO!!!!  From this objective evaluation, I conclude that Progressivism is a proven failure.  It is a concept of government which is wholly unacceptable.  The vision of our Founders and of the Framers of the Constitution was in fact astoundingly wise.  They were not ignorant of the essence of Progressivism.  They considered it and they astutely rejected it.  They were right to do so.  I wish to encourage every American to think these issues and choices through carefully and to chose the most beneficial concept of government function and scope of these two waring viewpoints.  If you do so, I think most of you will be wise enough to confirm the wisdom of our Founders and the Framers of the Constitution.  They were the real advanced thinkers, not these wrongheaded so-called progressives who merely added a bit of democracy to an essentially aristocrats-know-best feudal merchantilist society.

Racial Slander of the Tea Party Movement

Over the weekend, four members of the Black Caucus of the House of Representatives told a story of being called by the n-word 15 times as they walked through Tea Party demonstrators on Saturday.  These Representatives were John Lewis, Andre Carson, Emanuel Cleaver, and James Clyburn, the House Majority Whip.  This story was repeated by much of the media, including Bill O'Reilly on Fox News.  Emanuel Cleaver said he was spit upon.  They went on to say that a demonstrator was detained by the police, but then turned loose after consultation with Rep. Cleaver.  The story also said that men encountering this ill-behavior were stretched out as they walked through the crowd and all heard the same behavior.

This does not sound like the kind of behavior I have seen when I was at three different Tea Party protests in Washington, D.C.  There were black Tea Party demonstrators in each case and there were black speakers at at least two of them.  There were also black people selling the Gadsden "Don't Tread on Me" flags at each event.  At the 4th of July event a large banner opposing the Tea Party demonstrators and chanting "Health Care Now" was carried through the crowd and no one did anything more than chant back at them.  I saw nothing but normal human respect for the black people present.  In fact, it seemed clear to me that many there were very happy that some black Americans share our American values.

There are a lot of Tea Party people and a few are a bit odd, as a few of any large group of people are.  I have met many racial bigots who are Democrats and many who are radical left Democrats.  In fact, I have often noted that there is very little respect for blacks and Hispanics among other Democrats who believe blacks and Hispanics have less ability to manage their own lives than other Americans do and hence need special favors from the government.  This is clearly a very profound disrespect for black and Hispanic Americans, based on nothing but their race.  Therefore, it is racism.  May there be, or is it probable that there are, a few racists among the Tea Party people?  The answer is likely yes.  But, the essence of the Tea Party movement is that the vast majority of Americans are capable of managing their own lives in a responsible way and that they do not want government to take over the direction of their lives.  So, not surprisingly, and very much contrary to a common claim from the left, racism is not a common characteristic of Tea Party people.

There is a video of the four black Congressmen passing by the Tea Party demonstrators.  Rather than being strung out as in their testimony, they were clumped together.  They do not give any appearance of being threatened.  I have listened to the video over and over and I cannot make out any use of the n-word.  Many others have also listened for it and say they cannot make it out, though a couple of leftist have said they could.  There is no picture of a demonstrator approaching Rep. Cleaver and spitting on him.  There is no evidence of a policeman retaining anyone or approaching Rep. Cleaver with someone.  In fact, if the event that was said to have occurred had, I am sure that the nearby police would have gathered around the Congressmen and given them an escort and probably would have pushed back the crowd and arrested people.  None of this happened.  The police did have to arrest people in the pro-ObamaCare demonstrator crowd, but they say they did not have to arrest any anti-ObamaCare demonstrators.  Many cameras were in use by the demonstrators, but no one has come forth with any visual evidence that the racial ill-behavior occurred.  Various media reporters were also around.  What is more, if someone had shouted racial slurs, other Tea Party people would have shouted him down, based on what I have seen.  The video would have picked up the shout down!

Given that the four black Congressmen are all Democrats and all voted for the extremely socialist ObamaCare bill, it would not be surprising if they all subscribed to the very venerable socialist principle that the truth is whatever advances socialism.  This principle has been richly demonstrated in the socialist arguments for ObamaCare, which clearly have been otherworldly.  Denigrating the Tea Party protesters with a racist tag has clearly been a pattern with the left.  They have made many claims which had no substance.  I suspect they had become desperate enough to try to give substance to those slanderous claims that they made up this story.  That fits the Big Picture better than their story does.

Tea Parties on 15 April Protest Taxes and Deficits

Tea party protests, after the fashion of the original Boston Tea Party, are being organized in 300 cities in the United States on 15 April 2009. Please consider attending one of these Tea Parties or having one of your own, even if just with your family or a few neighbors. The huge spending being planned by the federal government will destroy much of the private sector, where we make our own individual choices in the management of our lives, replacing it with a much more bloated public sector, where elitists dictate our values to us.

Then there are the terrible deficits to be passed on to our children and grandchildren. It is not enough that the politicians will not address the tax burdens of the Social Security system as the Baby Boomers retire or the deficits of Medicare as more and more of the same Baby Boomers, no longer productive workers, have more and more health problems. With those problems alone our children and grandchildren were going to be staggering under unbearable tax burdens. But this was not enough. Government responded to the Oil Crisis by refusing to allow more oil and gas production and threatening to bankrupt all users of coal. The auto industry staggered. Then when the recession caused some people with high risk loans to default, even though the federal government with ACORN's help, had long urged financial firms to make risky loans while taking them to court, the government and the media claimed the entire recession was caused by the American financial industry and capitalism. Never mind the fact that the rest of the world had largely been in recession before the U.S. was. But, this was the "crisis" too good not to use as the excuse for a major grab for power by our newly installed Messiah of Socialism and his "Progressive" Congressional majority.

When you can stagger no more children, what happens to you then? Do the kindly socialists of the government then have any use for you? Or do you finally overcome your public high school and college indoctrinations as socialists and rise up in rebellion? Would it not be much better to rebel now, before quite so many American lives have been destroyed because no one was allowed to figure out what their personal dream was and then pursue it? The socialists do not like it, but life is personal. If you cannot see that it is so, you have only to study the history of all the other socialists regimes to learn what happens to the herd of followers when socialist government is in control of their lives. There must be something spiritually very deadening about these tyrannical systems which so consistently have turned their people to drunken stupors as the only way to lessen the pain of their personal unhappiness. Awaken, please, for this is a looming tragedy you must not ignore.

The Economist on Obama

In the closing weeks of the presidential campaign, The Economist had Barack Obama's picture on the cover twice and they endorsed him for President. It is interesting that in an article in the 7 - 13 March issue called Anger Management they say:

Anger seethes about the fact that so many big-government Democrats mysteriously lose their appetite for taxes when it comes to paying them themselves. This week saw the revelation that yet another of Mr Obama's nominees, Ron Kirk, the would-be trade representative, underpaid his taxes in 2005-2007. But above all, people are angry that Mr Obama led them down the garden path. Bipartisanship? He is proposing one of the most liberal budgets in decades. Abolishing earmarks? The budget contains 8,570 of them. Honesty? The finance, property and insurance industries (all getting huge bail-outs) were the largest source of campaign contributions to Mr Obama after lawyers. Transcending racism? Eric Holder, the attorney-general, has accused Americans of being cowards when it comes to discussing race.

Perhaps not being George Bush is not enough, though it seemed that way to too many people during the election!

It is noted that almost 60% of Americans are opposed to giving money to banks and auto makers who are in danger of failing. They also mention the Tea Parties springing up around the country. Overall, this is just one more case of a somewhat left of center group or publication having second thoughts about a man who they were clearly determined to fool themselves about during the election. There was no rational reason whatever to expect that Obama was anything but a highly committed socialist. He had grown up with a radically socialist mother, taken his first jobs with radically socialist community disorganizers, associated with ex-Weathermen, associated with a church that insisted that Christ was black and upon a kind of superior black segregation out of the general American society, had long been associated with ACORN, had the most socialist voting record in the Senate, had many very dubious ties with shady real estate owners in Chicago, and had used some very dirty campaign tactics in the caucases in which he had done so well. Yet many people were determined to think that he would not act like a socialist and he would be clean when he achieved the power of the Presidency, which he and the Democrats lusted after so greatly. Duh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!