Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
Psalm 1:1
We will be reminded over the weekend of the Greatnes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His accomplishments are numerous and his influence seemingly immeasurable. The youngest to receive the Nobel. An award of great notice until recently trifled in popular recognition with the selections of Barack H. Obama (2009) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. (2007). Maybe when Beowulf returns, we can scratch their names from the trophy case! His orations cast him amongst the world's preeminent Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan and William Faulkner [Delivered one of the world's great speeches for his Nobel Prize. Talk about deserving what you get!]. His writings have become required reading in universities and high schools throughout the US. Dr. King was never elected or appointed to public office yet, his influence was tremendously impacted legislative leaders. His leadership gave courage to Republican Senators and Congressmen, at the time the minority party, to push through legislation overriding America's "Jim Crow" laws. They won't show this in school but, this is the outcome of the vote:
The original House version:
- Democratic Party: 152-96 (61%-39%)
- Republican Party: 138-34 (80%-20%)
Cloture in the Senate:
- Democratic Party: 44-23 (66%–34%)
- Republican Party: 27-6 (82%–18%)
The Senate version:
- Democratic Party: 46-21 (69%–31%)
- Republican Party: 27-6 (82%–18%)
The Senate version, voted on by the House:
- Democratic Party: 153-91 (63%–37%)
- Republican Party: 136-35 (80%–20%)
Al Sharpton claimed on his show that Democrats supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Doesn't seem like the Democrat Party was as influenced by Dr. King as the Republican Party. Al Sharpton won't tell ya that. Painfully, the labor entrenched public schools fail to teach history and excel in teaching revisionist history. Community organizers in the classroom have no problem miseducating children and adults on voting rights. Often, minorities are told that without the 1964 Civil Rights Act they would not be able to vote in the United States. The Patriotic teacher would take the opportunity to advise that all minority voters are protected, since Reconstruction, under the US Constitution's 14th Amendment. The union teacher--the most to lose from an educated minority populus--without shame provokes the paranoia of the student by affirming that the 1964 Act "guarantees" the right to vote and that only one Party--the Democrat--will protect that right. Irresponsible? Yes. Effective? Yes. When corraling a people is essential, one's methods are never questioned. I suppose Rev. Al has been miseducated enough to know that it was Herman Cain that first accused Blacks of being brainwashed and not Malcom X. Today's Ron Paul is yesterday's Malcolm X.
What others won't disclose is that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a rewrite of President Dwight Eisenhower's 1957 Civil Rights Act. The common denominator for each: Lyndon Baines Johnson. The 1964 Civil Rights act enforces the constitutional right to vote, confers jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States of America to provide relief against discrimination in public accommodations, authorizes the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, extends the Commission on Civil Rights, prevents discrimination in federally assisted programs, establishes a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and other purposes. Nowhere in this act does it give you the right to vote. The Radical Republicans in 1868 satisfied that barrier. So what of this 1957 Act? It prohibited intimidation, coercion or otherwise interfering with the rights of persons to vote for the President and members of Congress. The Attorney General of the United States "may" [sic] institute actions, including injunctions and charges of contempt of court, with fines not to exceed $1000 and six months imprisonment. There are also extensive safeguards for the rights of accused under this statute. Federal judges were permitted to hear cases related to the act with or without juries. Not being able to vote in most of the South, blacks were also excluded from juries. President Eisenhower was bitterly disappointed with the bill. He advised that he wanted a stronger and more enforceable piece of legislation, "I wanted a much stronger civil rights bill in '57 than I could get, But the Democrats . . . wouldn't let me have it." Why is the "may" so important? Three letters: LBJ. Let's explore why the Father of the Great Society supported the 1957 Act. The Senate Majority Leader advised:
"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."
The Senate leader, Lyndon Baines Johnson, was a Democrat, and recognized that the Civil Rights bill traveling through Congress, would rent his party in two: right wing Southern senators and liberal West Coast senators. Don't worry LBJ! I think we have the picture. The real reason was ambition. LBJ knew he would run for President someday. He needed a bill that was pro-civil rights to appeal to potential allies of the Democrat Party and weakly enforceable that he may keep his Majority Leadership and maintain appearances with the strong Southern contingency. The public, at a loss of confidence, became less supportive when Eisenhower openly admitted that he did not understand parts of the bill. Score one for LBJ! By the way, who signed the 1964 Act? Eisenhower? Nixon? Kennedy? Nah, it was the uppity Negroes best friend: LBJ.
"Weel about and turn about and do jis so,
Eb'ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow."
I must applaud the Democrat Party. They are so wise. More than 400 state laws, constitutional amendments, and city ordinances legalizing segregation and discrimination were passed in the United States between 1865 and 1967. Western states routinely passed discriminatory legislation against Asians and Native Americans, passing 51 Jim Crow laws, 12 percent of the nation's total. Outside the South, California passed more Jim Crow laws (17) than any other state in the country. Jim Crow induced Blacks to leave the South for The Warmth of Other Suns. In 1910, the African-American population of Detroit was 6,000. The Great Migration, and immigration from eastern and southern Europe, turned the city into the country's fourth-largest. By the start of the Great Depression in 1929, its African-American population had climbed to 120,000. More than six (6) million Blacks left the South. The economic tragedy is simple to relate. By 1910, it is estimated that Blacks owned fifteen (15) million acres of land in the South. Modern African-American rural landowners possess a total of approximately 7.7 million acres of land, less than 1% of all privately owned rural land in the United States, valued at $14 Billion dollars. Think about how much wealth and inheritance was lost thanks to the Jim Crow Economy. How's that Union job at Hostess working for ya? Through intimidation and later, dependency, the Democrat Party convinced 90% of Black America that a single political party could protect them from "the evil doings" of the Radical Republicans, the greed of corporations and their shareholders and the "ever enduring" stigma of slavery. I can hear the Jim Crow Dems speaking, "Listen, we aren't talking about race but I know the Republicans brought it up and they don't want to apologize. They were always against you."
The term Jim Crow is believed to have originated around 1830 when a white, minstrel show performer, Thomas "Daddy" Rice, blackened his face with charcoal paste or burnt cork and danced a ridiculous jig while singing the lyrics to the song, "Jump Jim Crow." Theologian Howard Thurman described "Jim Crow" laws in this manner to his daughters:
"The measure of a man's estimate of your strength is the kind of weapons he feels that he must use in order to hold you fast in a prescribed place."
You see the Dems were just having a little fun expressing how different whites were from blacks. Yeah, the DEMs pulled out some other stereotypes to keep the party going with sleight of hand "You see, wese gonna shows you what the Republicans be thinking about you really!" Ever building the case for a second class status in the Republican Party composed of a racially disdaining group of elitists, the DEMs pulled out all of the stops by adding some characters from their psychological warfare cabinet: Sambos, Coons, and Zip Dandies. By the way, Black conservative, when were you last called one of these names by your smitten and irate Democrat brethren? Yes, even Dr. King suffered such expresson from Black leaders of his day. All in fun of course!
Dr. King was an ordinary man who made extraordinary decisions that produced exceptional results. While we rage in battle over the fact that Dr.King was a registered Republican, he no doubt felt an allegiance towards the Democrat Party. Author Stephen Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr, wrote, "I feel someone must remain in the position of non-alignment, so that he can look objectively at both parties and be the conscience of both—not the servant or master of either." However, his body may have been in the Republican Party with his father, Martin L. King, Sr. but his mind was on the Democrat Party. Dr. King, Jr. always made it clear that he was not Dr. King, Sr. In part, Sr. King agreed with the elders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that it was ok for Jr. King to be a national or even regional leader. However, the black clergymen agreed that he needed to stay out of "Atlanta's business". Let me be the first to report to you that Men of the Cloth are still men. They were jealous and cautious of Dr. King's popularity and influence. Jr. King referred to them as an "envious old guard". They did not want him changing things in Atlanta proper. In an attempt to quell the massess, the established Negro Leadership, I'll refer to them as Atlanta's Talented Tenth a la W.E.B. DuBois, had an agreement with the established white leadership, including Mayor William Hartsfield and Police Chief Herbert Jenkins. The agreed with a gradual and peaceful process of desegregation in the BIG ATL. Each group agreed that Jr. King was a threat and decided to keep him out. This propelled King Jr. to search for a "liberal" white brother in the battle to put down the pretentiousness of political correctness and execute moral leadership. He saw that in John F. Kennedy.
Given past baggage in former Vice-President Richard Nixon's and Senator Kennedy's background, he saw the latter as a better Presidential choice. He went as far to say that he planned on endorsing him in 1964. It would have been the first time that King, Jr. had endorsed a candidate. The affinity and adoration the two had in public discourse is questioned in the Presidential actions of Kennedy. According to the National Black Republican Association, Kennedy, lauded as a proponent of civil rights, voted against the 1957 Civil rights Act while he was a senator, as did Democrat Senator Al Gore, Sr. He was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph who was a black Republican. President Kennedy, in order to undermine Dr. King, through his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had the civil rights leader wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist. Clayborn Carson et al, The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr: Symbol of the Movement, January 1957 – December, 1958, captured the thinking of many modern conservatives, especially Black, that call themselves Independents, with this quote from Dr. King, Jr.:
Actually, the Negro has been betrayed by both the Republican and the Democratic party. The Democrats have betrayed him by capitulating to the whims and caprices of the Southern Dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed him by capitulating to the blatant hypocrisy of reactionary right wing northern Republicans. And this coalition of southern Dixiecrats and right wing reactionary northern Republicans defeats every bill and every move towards liberal legislation in the area of civil rights.
He, like many of his day, had given up on the Party of Lincoln and surrendered to the Party of Jefferson Davis to promote and produce results born of universal truths. The road well traveled may have produced the catalysts needed for victory. However, is it the change of promise idealed by Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington? Or have we produced the field of dreams envisioned by Karl Marx, WEB Dubois and lawyer, revolutionary politician Vladimir Lenin? You thought I was going to say Barack Obama didn't you? Dr. King felt the pangs of success and failure within and without his race. He felt the tremors of success from within and from without his political party. Considering the icon requires an earthened look at his influnces and what has come to pass for the sake of America. .
Many of our bretheren have been duped and made afraid to exit false modern movements because of their duplicity of thought. Dr. King was already a leader of a multi-racial, American populist cultural movement that sought vindication and legislative remedy for the racial injustices of society. Movement leaders that coerced Dr. King to attend the 1963 March on Washington needed him more than Dr, King needed them. They were a school of American liberalists seeking approval and a means of fully infiltrating the Black community. American liberalists composed of unions attempting to cover years of discrimination with a zealous oureach to Black workers, left leaning.community organizations and alternative lifestyle proponents needed an icon to hitch their wagon. Fashioned by radical thinkers like Sol Alinsky, the organizations sought validity, acceptance and empowerment from a traditionally conservative yet abused community. Each had their own agenda but could mask their threats in the universal suffrage of Black Americans. I can imagine people sitting in a dark, musty room smoking cigars and agreeing to support one another because each has what the other needs.
"Yeah, I was born this way like you were born Black. Gay Rights is the same as Voting Rights!"
"A Living Wage. Listen, all you are missing is a piece of the government. Help me get the living wage and I will help you with affirmative action."
"You know your people, eh excuse me, I meant, "Our people" are struggling with the church stopping women from controlling their bodies. You help with abortion rights, eh I mean Women's Rights then, we'll be down with the cause."
What did we receive in return: Detroit and other modern urban metrolpolitans! Some alliances prove more unsightly than the treasures of the cause pursued.
Detroit is a Socialist city teetering on the edge of cultural bankruptcy. "So what does this have to do with Dr. King, Ken!? You know I am already mad at you for not bowing down and worshipping at the image of the Great Civil Rights Leader." Firstly, we have enough rock remaining to build a statue for Booker T. Washington, Harriett Tubman and Malcolm X. Secondly, you don't spit in te wind and you don't ask the Communist Chineese government to build a statue of Dr. King. Amazing what American Union Labor won't volunteer to do! Finally, it's sited near the FDR statue (All Blacks love FDR!) and is facing the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. Who was in charge of putting this plan together? I
digress. While he preached of a colorless society, his leanings towards liberality secured a sense amongst the Black electorate that vigilante politics was an acceptable framework of voting. Vigilante politics is composed of three principles: (1) racial preference; (2) party preference and (3) economic preference. Personal Responsibility is one the most laudable tenets of conservatism. The term personal, at least in its Old French origins, yields no wiggle room for the faint at heart. During the 14th century, the term meant "pertaining to self". The German playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe advised, “Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and then the whole world will be clean." This is not the case in liberal politics. Vigilant electors feel the need to elect not "from their own" but "from their own kind". Hence, while affirmative action is sought in employment and contracting, it is frowned upon in elections. If a white man that shares your belief and possesses the skillset to govern is running against a black man that shares your belief and lacks the skillset to govern then, you choose the latter rather than the first. Your budget may suffer and mandates made law but "at least he's got my best interest at heart." The second is party preference. It does not matter! There is only one party that understands what I've been through so I must choose that one. Principles are unimportant, only Party really matters. Last, economic preference. When given the choice of supply side and demand side, always choose demand side economics. To the vigilant electorate, there will never be enough goods because a few people that produce them are hoarding them. We need our stuff and we need it now. When I am unable to be satisfied, I believe that the goods maker should be punished. Raise his taxes. Create rules that will slow-up his success. Since I am so poor and weak, I will demand that the government act as my agent and force the producers to meet my need. That'll show'em!
For urban America, vigilante politics has ruined budgets, economic growth and taken liberties from families and individuals. A Great Case for this is Detroit. I will succinctly consider each of the Vigilante points in establishing the failure of such governments. Mayor Dave Bing, Democrat, had advised his popolus in December 2011 that the city was experiencing some spending pressures but nothing they could not handle. After an audit, the city was only in the red by $67 million . By January 2012, there are concerns that the city may not be able to meet May 2012 payroll. Who's responsible? Detroit governs by way of a strong mayoral system. All tickets are punched by the Big Cheese in the leather chair. However the budget is approved by the city council. Let's get over points one and two at once. The council is all black and all are Democrats. Apparently, there are no other races living in Detroit and certainly, no Detroit City Republican Party exists. Point three: economic preference. You would hope in a tremendous area of trade and factory production that many members of your city council would understand and promote supply side economics where possible. You would hope there is no dependency on government at all with its ports and huge involvement in domestic and foreign trade. Tcha, you know what? No! Mind you, Motor City councilmembers are compensated at $73,000 per annum. Our first guest on Vigilante Elections: Charles Pugh. Elected President becomes he received the most votes, what a qualifier, Pugh was a television journalist and radio personality. All the signs of a fiscal policy hawk. The electorate chose him despite a late campaign controversy when he acknowledged that he was struggling financially and his $385,000 condominiium was in foreclosure. I understand, things happen. Guest two: Gary Brown, former Deputy Police Chief. Public Safety. Great! Financial Strength: Part of a $8.4 million whistle blower's suit against Detroit. He won. It gets better! Guest three: Saunteel Jenkins. Foreclosure. Jenkins owed $167,000 on her mortgage and decided to walk away. Three years salary and it's paid off. Guest four: Kenneth Cockriel, Jr. Former Wayne County Commissioner. He must now how to manage a budget. Well, he is also the son of a self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist! Well Ken, apples do fall from trees! Yeah, but this one bounced back! He served on the committee that awarded Van Jones "The Maurice Sugar Voice for Justice Award" for "Human Rights Activists and Green jobs Advocate". Yeah, that Van Jones!
There must be someoone on the Council will management experience taht will lend itself to a supply side economy with limited government. The good people of Detroit must be crying out for smaller government and lower taxes especially after all of the pain of GM and Chrysler being bought out by Obama Motors. Guest five: Brenda B. Jones. She's the former President of Communications Workers of America. Member of the NAACP and the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights. She can certainly recognize a special interest. She also served on the committee that awarded Van Jones"The Maurice Sugar Voice for Justice Award" for "Human Rights Activists and Green jobs Advocate". Yeah, that Van Jones! Guest six: Andre Spivey. A Morehouse Man. Like Dr. King. He did not serve on the Van Jones Committee. However, Ponsella Hardaway did. Why does this matter? Hardaway is the Executive Director of MOSES. Spivey sits on the Board of MOSES. It is the Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength and its purpose is to act on issues that have a systemic impact on the quality of life in the community and social justice. They believe in the Equitable allocation and distribution of public funds. MOSES, not the one played by Charleston Heston, is affiliated with Gamaliel Foundation. Barack Obama was trained by the Sol Alinsky-founded Gamaliel Foundation. This is the Foundation that is fighting against Wisconsin legislation that would make it illegal to pay a person to sign a petition. Wow, a Christian organization fighting for Voter Fraud. No collection here! This church is paying! Guest seven: James Tate. his campaign material made it very plain: PRO-UNION! He understands teh importance of unions. Guest eight: Councilman Kwame Kenyatta faced foreclosure and walked away in 2008. He had more important things to do like meet with Venezuela's envoy to the United States, Ambassador Bernado Alvarez Herrera. He was joined by JoAnn Watson (she will be our last guest), Brenda Jones, Kwame Kenyatta, Martha Reeves and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to discuss how to expand his country's programs that help the poor. By the end of the evening, the Detroit councilmembers had convinced the Ambassador that they were the needy ones. The Ambassador announced a new program to extend the free eye surgery begun by Cuba to the US Midwest. O goody, have a pop and a smile! The Cubans with the help of the Venezueleans are bringin their health program to our shores. It's probably covered under ObamaCare! Who else was in attendance to celebrate the outpouring of help from one socialist nation to a socialist city? Howabout the International Action Center (IAC). Per the website: "The IAC strives to draw from the leadership, connect the struggles, and bring together communities of color, women, lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, youth and students, immigrant and workers' organizations in order build a progressive movement for social justice and change. Ultimately it is our goal to work towards the liberation and freedom of all peoples living in the U.S. and around the world. IAC defines itself as an "anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist" organization." Just what the motor city needs, a people committed to shutting it down. Not finished! Howabout Latinos Unidos / United de Michigan (LUUM)? While their site is no longer operative, it was once reported that their goal was "to inform about the inhumane raids, home intrusions, racial profiling and other atrocities perpetuated by the Federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (FBICE) upon our immigrant communities in Michigan and throughout the US". Maybe that is why Detroit is a sanctuary city. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Detroit has got to be the exception to the rule. There has to be someone on the Council that understands that liberal good intentions inflate costs and expenses for a city. Michigan's preliminary review found that the city had failed to adjust annual budgets in the face of declining revenues and/or increased expenditures, has recurring fund deficits of more than $100 million and failed to file an adequate or approved Deficit Elimination Plan. The state says the city has budgetary shortfalls that could lead to a negative cash balance as early as April, 2012.There must be someone that understands the kinetic framework of free markets and seeks only the best for small businesses America's wealth creation machine. Uh Uh! Our final guest: Jo Ann Watson. The Michigan activist is an unrepentant socialist. She has sponsored more than 1,000 bills. Her bonafides include serving as Executive Director of the Detroit NAACP, Public Policy Liaison for Congressman John Conyers and Co-Founder of the Coalition for Health care Equity. She presented her book Reparations to Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama. She is sponsoring two Detroiters to study Medicine in Cuba and then, return to provide care to the City. She has a relationship with the Pro Cuban/North Korean Workers World Party. From June 14-17 2009, the Moratorium NOW!-initiated People's Summit was held at Grand Circus Park, Detroit, MI. A "tent city" was built at the location, and protesters camped there for four days of "Active Resistance, Political Discussion and Strategizing for a “People's Stimulus Plans” and an “Economic Bill of Rights” for Working People and the Poor." Moratorium NOW! is a Workers World Party-front organization. Do you really believe that these vigilante politicians have the citizens best interests in mind. I doubt it sincerely.
The Civil Rights Movement and the Dr. King icon are inseparable. How we see him will be based on which cultural philosophy we subscribe. If a modern American liberal (socialist, Marxist, communist, etc.) then, you will refer to his commitment to Theodore Roosevelt's preference for human welfare over property rights, Woodrow Wilson's call for limited government through government expansion and federal control, Franklin Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights, John Kennedy's dreams of eradicating the human condition through government welfare and Lyndon Baines Johnson's welfare and bust legislated programs. Union leaders and race-baiting community organizers will point to his convictions on voting rights, gay rights, abortion rights and government entitlement. If a conservative, like his neice Alveda King, you wonder how the liberals were able to high jack the symbolism of universal, unalienable rights granted every man by his Creator from the iconic speaker. You can not recognize such a liberal Dr. King from all of the made for TV movies! You refer to his dire need for a multi-racial approach to harmonizing protests of injustice even as his bretheren lose faith in his "human race" concept. He expounded upon American values to include the vision of a color blind society in his 1963 speech "I have a Dream". His inspiration for one of the most beloved speeches in human history: Archibald Carey, Jr.'s address to the 1952 Republican National Convention and Prathia Hall's speech at the site of a burned-down church in Terrell County, Georgia in September 1962. We will be reminded that he was a great civil rights leader as evidenced by his efforts on the 1965 Montgomery Bus Boycot. The transit boycott of National City Lines, owned by General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone and others is endeared by union leaders and race organizers as a political and social victory. As a conservative that appreciates the beauty of free markets, I recognize the brilliance of the financial starvation of a major corporation that monopolized city services due to a local government's decision to pick a winner. It really goes to show that the greatest threat of the Movement was not political or social but economics. Bet your child won't hear that in history class!
Nearly fifty years after his death, Dr. King is an enigma to many who only know the broad strokes of his life.. Doesn't the Poor People's Campaign of 1968 reveal flashes of Occupy Wall Street brilliance. Weary from his shunning by radical blacks, leftists community organizers and egalitarian sympathizers, he attempted to broach the immorality of war appropriations and Jim Crow segregation with federal government intervention. His frustration with an America that was not reacting quickly enough to a crisis led him to trust a political and economic philosophy that would not offer the Utopia sought or preferred. Dare say, maybe it was the only one available as literary critic Lionel Trilling once asserted.
In the United States at this time Liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation. This does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to conservatism or to reaction. Such impulses are certainly very strong, perhaps even stronger than most of us know. But the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.
Resist the impulse. Isn't this a tenet of non-violence? There were those that used his gift and his grace to increase in the daily lives of Americans prescribed general welfare and subsidy. A southern gentleman and scholar, grounded in the radical conservatism of his heritage and yet transformed in his "weary years" to a liberal icon without much clout amongst those that shaped his very image. In the end, American liberalism co-opted the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Economic Power Movement and our Political Aspirants. It also failed its greatest Peace icon.
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