(Above: George Zimmerman at his trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin.)
Introduction: My Initial Reaction on the George Zimmerman Verdict and the Real Problems with Racism in America Today
For the past week or more since the verdict in the George Zimmerman murder trial was announced, I have had to read with utter disgust and contempt the opinions of virtually each and every one of my liberal friends on Facebook crying foul, claiming that the jurors were all racist. I have seen one person compare the "injustice" of Zimmerman's acquittal to a case involving a 22 year old black woman living in Jacksonville, Florida, named Marissa Alexander, who was convicted of attempted murder after firing warning shots at her abusive husband amid a severe beating and sentenced to the minimum term of 20 years in prison as she was found to be in violation of the "Stand Your Ground" law in the state. For many of my liberal friends, they cried foul because of the inconsistencies of the law and how it was applied in the two cases, often citing in a cliche I will use, "What is good for the goose is good for the gander," that Zimmerman should have received a similar sentence. While I will agree upon the principle of this concept, as the federal legal code specifies that all have equal rights protected under the law, I do find it extremely offensive for at least two reasons that every single one of them claimed it was a situation of racist manifestation, and nothing more, because Zimmerman is a white man while Alexander is black. Furthermore, the testimony by Rachel Jeantel, which was filled with holes and inconsistencies as well as racially-charged comments such as "cracker," also upset me, not so much because I was offended by them since I was keenly aware based upon her inability to read a letter she claimed to have written before the court during the trial that she is lacking in intelligence, but because it showed the lack of respect the black community has for the white population as a whole, particularly when she stated that she did not consider that word to be a racial slur.
Upon reading these comments, which literally numbered in the dozens, I became so outraged and emotionally-distraught over this form of bigotry that I could not bring myself to immediately express my opinions on this issue or any other until now, a tragedy over which I still lament because I had planned to author an article on July 14 comparing the histories of the French Revolution to that of our own, and how it appears as if most Americans today identify with the founding principles of the former that were based on pure, unadulterated atheism. As I was telling a new friend of mine I have made over Google+ who is highly intelligent and very insightful in her perspective of our society based upon the fact that she is of Puerto Rican-Hispanic heritage, our nation is experiencing what has amounted to an alarming growth in racism towards the white race, whether it be men or women, primarily from the black community. Between 1955 and 2008, America made a tremendous amount of progress towards addressing the issue of civil rights through copious methods, but upon the election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, we have experienced a regression in these efforts as opposed to progression. Never before during my lifetime have I ever seen such division between the races in our country, and with the black community no longer the largest minority demographic domestically, they are louder now than ever before in their cries of institutional prejudice, injustice, and demands for government subsidies to provide for them financially while also complaining of not being able to be hired at well-paying jobs. The culture the Democrats have created over the course of the past 80 years is one of dependency rather than self-reliance. Even during the presidency of George W. Bush -- one that I considered to be a total failure despite my voting for him in both 2000 and 2004 and his serving a full two terms in office -- the economy flourished for the majority of his term until the financial market crashed in 2008. President Obama often points to the Bush record of creating only 1.2 million jobs over his tenure, but the economy never suffered prior to his last year in office, and most of the economic growth America had experienced had come over the previous 20 years in the Reagan and Clinton presidencies. It is no secret that America's economy is the worst it has been since the presidency of Jimmy Carter, for although we are not experiencing double-digit inflation in the realm of 13.5% as the nation did at the end of his term, the level of unemployment is as high, and the economy has seen a virtual retraction since he entered office rather than real growth. I have posted some of these figures in previous blog articles, so I will not go to the trouble of cutting and pasting them again: 58% of people who have found new jobs after losing their previous one during the Obama presidency earn less in wages than they did previously. Many of the jobs people managed to be hired at are only part-time jobs. A record 46 million Americans receive food stamps and various other forms of welfare subsidies. All of this is occurring, of course, as the president proudly claims victory in his fight to restore economic viability in America, and we have not even seen the impending damage to the small businesses and even large corporations that Obama Care will create yet, as one report I have also posted in another blog states that a conservative estimate of at least 800,000 American jobs will be lost due to businesses being unable to pay for the extremely high premiums the federal government will be charging. If it was change for which a plurality of the American electorate voted Obama into office to achieve, they are getting it right up the derriere. I never voted for Obama, so I can sleep at night secure in the knowledge that I did my part to avoid the further expansion of the welfare state and socialism in America.
No other minority demographic has suffered more from these horrible economic conditions than the black community, and yet they continue to vote as a block for politicians into office who maintain their status quo behind the metaphor of standing in line, waiting to be fed from the soup ladle of the federal government. Because conservative Republicans and those within the party of the libertarian mindset do not believe in propagating the welfare state further and instead wish to give "a hand up" economically by creating better conditions for these individuals to be hired by rewarding employers, they -- we -- are referred to as racists, as the party of the "good old white boys." In most of the years in U.S. history where every income level and population demographic experienced greater prosperity, a less-intrusive presidency presided over the nation and implemented similar policies with regards to the economy. Bill Clinton is often credited by some to have presided over the longest period of economic growth in our nation's history due to his liberal policies, yet these people, no doubt members of the political Left, fail to mention that this period of growth did not transpire until the "Contract with America" Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 in what was one of the greatest sweeps and transfers of political power in the history of the Legislative Branch. There were two factors that caused this to happen: 1) Clinton signed into law a massive tax hike shortly after entering the White House in 1993 amid an economic downturn, pushing the highest wage earners' tax rates up to 39.6%, which also included a certain surcharge, and 2) he signed into law, too, the Brady Crime Bill, which banned the selling of certain brands of assault rifles domestically for a 10 year period that ended in 2004. Upon the GOP taking control of Congress, they immediate began pressuring Clinton into moderating his liberal policies, and he would, as a result, sign such bills into law as the Welfare to Work Act and the Tax Reform Act of 1997. Clinton, while never a conservative as Democratic president John F. Kennedy was accused of being by members of his own party, was widely considered a moderate, and as one may read, a member of the "New Democrat" movement that came in response to the massive changes in American political and pop cultures during the Reagan Revolution of the 1980's toward conservatism. He was able to adapt to the changes in America's political climate as any slick liberal politician will do, a trait that I rarely ever see out of GOP lawmakers. He is often remembered fondly by a large portion of the America public for the economic boom of the 1990's that was, in part, because of the GOP's pressuring him to modify his liberal approach to public policy, and also due to the technology sector rising to prominence in the domestic and global economy.
Never has there been greater poverty in post-Depression era America other than perhaps the 1970's stagflation era than what we are experiencing today, and as I stated, the black community continues to suffer the most from this scourge. Any efforts to thwart the attempts at providing further socialist welfare policies to bridge the gap between the richest and poorest Americans is decried as racist and done so out of sheer greed. However, it is as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stated on the final day of her premiership on November 22, 1990 while being grilled by Members of Parliament (MP) from the Labour Party: that so long as the rich were "less rich," they would rather the poor were poorer. I will provide the video below, as it is greatly demonstrative of the way any good conservative or libertarian politician should challenge the fallacious logic of the Left in a debate:
Unfortunately, most conservatives and libertarians in America and around the Western world have not the stomach to take such a stand against these fallacies and vitriol from members of the political Left. They are far too concerned with their public image as a caretaker of the public good to challenge the injustices of the Left. Furthermore, the Left, through its mouthpiece in the mass media often declaring people on the Right as uncaring, immoral, and worse still, lacking in sufficient intelligence to govern any municipality, county, state, or the nation, we see today all too often those political figures caving into the pressure. However, revolutionary leaders such as Thatcher and Ronald Reagan ventured at their own political perils down the roads less traveled, and are remembered today for their integrity, their personal strength, and moral absolutism, and as two of the key figures on Time's 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century when it was compiled and published in 1999.
Thatcher was always critical of socialism. One phrase she is noted to have stated and that is accurate is this:
"The trouble with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money."
To continue to institute an oppressive tax system as both the U.S. and Britain have in place is wrong on many levels, as it impedes the full economic potential of both nations for all people. This is perhaps far worse in the inner cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast, where taxation is high and laws are Draconian. Perhaps no three cities in the nation are experiencing this worse than those of New York, Chicago, and Detroit. We know about the recent exploits of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was elected to the office as a Republican only to change his stripes midstream into a Democrat disguised in the clothing of an Independent. Chicago, of course, has the strictest gun laws in America, and every single year since 1982 when the city passed the ordinance banning the selling and possession of firearms within the city limits, the number of murders and instances of violent crime involving firearms increases substantially; still, they do not see the logic of their own foolishness, and instead continue to push for stricter gun laws, with one black civic leader going so far as to claim that the reason for the spike in murders among inner city blacks being because the police officers were the ones shooting them. We just learned this week that the city government of Detroit filed for bankruptcy, as it is the most economically-depressed city in America. That is a subject of a future blog that I personally look forward to addressing.
Thatcher also spoke about inner city socialism in Britain. The same is true here as in Britain, and the video below will demonstrate her views on this issue in the link provided as Blogger would not allow me to post the actual YouTube video in its physical presence:
For her efforts that returned the United Kingdom to international viability and economic prosperity following many decades of social and economic malaise due to the propagation of socialist policies, she is reviled by a sizable portion of the population, as those who are members of the Labour Party and other left-wing minority political parties gathered in Trafalgar Square during her funeral procession to celebrate her death with chants of "Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead!"
More Details on the George Zimmerman Trial and Verdict Which Led to the Jury's Verdict
The plight of the black community has been "championed" by the Democrats for the past 49 years by policies which promoted poverty and dependency on the federal government for their financial and economic welfare as opposed to creating opportunities for prosperity and the means to rise from the shackles of poverty. It is at its worst in the inner cities. Thomas Jefferson once opined about the issues plaguing the nations of Europe with large urban populations as well as expressing his hope for the destiny of America more than 200 years ago. As always, his words have proven to be profoundly wise and often times all too grim in their prophecy (Courtesy of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello):
(Above: Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, second governor of the state of Virginia, third president of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia. Courtesy of Wikipedia)
"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe."
Indeed, these words from the greatest sage among the Founding Fathers could be no wiser. There is no economically poorer demographic in America than the inner city black citizens, and their struggles continue to become further exacerbated by the day with the liberal politics that have largely permeated the various levels of American democracy over the past 80 years. As the trial seemed to linger for months, I lost interest in the details, and as I am attempting to find a web page discussing each and every piece of evidence provided about the case and the trial itself, I have found nothing other than news article after news article favoring the plight of Trayvon Martin and his family and championing the bigotry brought forth by Al Sharpton and scores of other protesters nationwide. Along with the strict gun laws which in some cities are in the form of outright bans on the selling and possession of them, the issue of abject poverty among the large populations of black citizens in the major urban areas are chiefly responsible for providing the conditions which have resulted in these terrible tragedies.
What bothers me more than the media twisting the story to meet its agenda, which has included such vile and illegal acts as CNN providing Mr. Zimmerman's Social Security Number and NBC altering the recording of his frantic 911 phone call after the shooting, has indeed been the mob rule brought about by what is tantamount to anarchists in the form of the black community. I have never had a problem with people speaking their minds upon issues of interest; that is a right guaranteed by the First Amendment that, unfortunately, is being breached egregiously by the Obama administration. I do mind, however, that mobs of black protesters are physically assaulting people of white and Hispanic backgrounds, and there is yet another story today I read online in which an innocent elderly white lady was attacked. The New Black Panther Party even announced that it would target police officers in the name of justice for Trayvon Martin. Such actions are disturbing and unacceptable. While I normally would embark upon the task of providing every single article I have read on these events, they are so numerous in quantity that it would literally take a day or more to locate.
(Above: Charlie Daniels, country musician and southern-rock icon, born in 1936. Courtesy of Wikipedia)
There is one opinion from one of Nashville's most well-respected country music celebrity artists I found to be most interesting which was posted by a co-worker on her Facebook account. None other than Charlie Daniels wrote on what appeared to be a rather objective account of the situation and mentioned one interesting point that has been the talk of many of co-workers and friends on Facebook who are mostly of the conservative persuasion, as it is almost impossible for a Democrat to be elected to public office in the state of Tennessee unless a politician runs in the city of Memphis, where the state's largest representation of the black community resides; those who are are largely considered of the "blue dog" variety and far less liberal than those in other parts of the country. Here is his take on the subject, and you will be horrified to learn of the case involving a young couple's murder at the hands of five black individuals in my hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee. These young individuals, named Channon Christian and Chris Newsom who were fellow students at the University of Tennessee, were brutally raped, murdered, and mutilated by five black individuals in 2007. The story never made the headlines of national news, however, as did the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman affair. Chris Newsom was someone with whom I attended the same elementary school many years ago, but did not attend the same middle or high school as the elementary school we attended splits into two different middle schools following a student's 5th Grade year depending on where one is zoned (Courtesy of The Charlie Daniels Band on Facebook):
Aftermath - Soapbox 07/19/13
The Trayvon Martin killing was a tragedy that, as far as I'm concerned, never should have happened. It was a classic case of really bad judgment on the part of both the involved individuals, with Zimmerman following Trayvon when he shouldn't have and Martin attacking Zimmerman when he shouldn't have and both men responsible for painting themselves into one of those tight corners where somebody has to be hurt.But the case, as tragic as it was, was made many times worse by an irresponsible media and civil rights leaders who exploited it for whatever ink and TV face time they could get out of it.In the time that the Zimmerman trial was going on there were sixty-one murders in Chicago, forty-three of them were black males and seven of those black males were under the age of 18, most of them died from gunshot wounds, all violent, all senseless. Do Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson just not care as much about the black male population of Chicago or is it that they just can't garner as much media attention there?Speaking of media attention, a young white couple, students at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, was carjacked, raped, tortured and murdered.The young man, Christopher Newsome, was raped and beaten, then castrated, shot, his body dumped by train tracks and set on fire while his girlfriend, Channon Christian, was forced to watch.Channon was gang raped over a period of days, her breasts cut off while she was still alive, then had cleaning fluid sprayed in her mouth in an attempt to erase the traces of DNA and her body put into a garbage receptacle.Maybe you're wondering why you haven't heard about this inhuman crime, perhaps you think your local paper didn’t had time to cover it yet.I seriously doubt that, since the crime took place in August of 2006, and of your local news outlets, most probably never covered it. I live about 150 miles from where it took place and, to the everlasting shame of networks and the local news media I didn't hear about it either until somebody brought my attention to it on the internet.How could a crime this heinous, this inhuman, this completely evil escape the notice of the mass media and the talking heads who are always screaming for equal justice under the law?Simple, it doesn't fit their agenda, the perpetrators were all black, all five of them. If this wasn't a case of blatant racism, I truly don't know what is. Do you honestly believe there wasn't racial bias involved in the choosing of the victims and the malicious violence that was done to them, and yet this story, one of the most hideous murders of the decade, was not covered by the media and was completely ignored by the so called civil rights leaders of all colors.A dangerous precedent has been set by Eric Holder's Justice Department and aided and abetted by the mainstream American media, selective prosecution and selective journalism all calculated to push a political agenda that drives the races in this nation farther apart every day.No good will come from Al Sharpton calling for demonstrations around the nation, already a group of blacks have beaten a random Hispanic citizen claiming, "This is for Trayvon".What's the difference in this and what the KKK was doing a few short decades ago. Is this what Sharpton and his ilk want to see happen, anarchy in the name of prejudice? Isn’t that very thing what he's supposed to be fighting against?America cannot continue down this path and remain the land of the free and the home of the brave where all men are equal under the law.America desperately needs a president who is a uniter, not a divider, a Justice Department that actually wants to enforce the law equally, regardless of color or race, a Congress and Senate who could reclaim their testicles and a media which reports the news instead of trying to make it.Blind hate is blind hate no matter what color it comes in.I will not be a part of it.What do you think?Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.God Bless AmericaCharlie Daniels
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(Above: Collage of photographs of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom along with their convicted murderers.)
(Above: Collage of photographs of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom along with their convicted murderers.)
Why? Why can we not declare a vile crime as this committed by about five black people a hate crime and yet people on the Left continue to call for rioting over their contention of what Zimmerman did was, indeed, that, and therefore a miscarriage of justice? Let us also take into account that that because Judge Richard Baumgardner, who presided over the first series of trials of the young couple's murderers, was under the influence of narcotics and has been sentenced to prison for his crime, each and every case involving the perpetrators was retried and the sentences attempted to be decreased in severity. This is an outrage, and yet no one outside of the Greater Knoxville Metropolitan Area knows about this case, and Charlie Daniels even lives just over three hours west of my home in Nashville. Mr. Daniels is renowned for being a staunch conservative, as are many of the musicians within the country music industry. To me, this was a well-articulated, fairly objective piece. As I stated earlier, I never followed the "play-by-play" accounts of the evidence brought before the court in Florida, but I can say that what was presented before the jury must have been convincing enough to acquit him based solely on the premise that there was no unanimous decision consensus towards a conviction and therefore there existed a shadow of doubt.
Furthermore, the same enlightened lady of Puerto Rican/Hispanic ethnicity who discussed this issue in depth also made the very important observation that the media has intentionally ignored: George Zimmerman is half Hispanic. Why, then, do we discriminate against him strictly on the merits of his white roots when he is also a member of the largest minority demographic in America today? This is a cruel irony, and one hindered by the fact that the Obama administration, Democrats, as well as and moderate Republicans in Congress are attempting to exploit their plight by creating a law providing for unconditional, universal amnesty for all immigrants regardless of their legal status. In 2012, 75% of Hispanic voters voted for Obama, and while that is an unacceptable statistic for me as a Republican, it is a far cry from the severity of the black community's votes for the president that same year, where approximately 93% voted as a block for Obama. It seems, then, that the issue of civil rights has taken many steps back after nearly 60 years of steady progress. Obama is no source of national unity, but rather of division.
Conclusion: Wrapping Up My Final Thoughts on the Matter and a Dire Warning for the Future of Civil Rights in America
As I stated in my introduction, I was so appalled and emotionally-distraught by the black community's and the liberals in the media as well as those who are my friends on Facebook I have known for years' public outcry of racism based upon the verdict, plus the media's role in exacerbating the issue, that I could not bear to write in my blog before today. As you know from previous articles, I suffer from both bipolar disorder and OCD, but while I will admit that this past week was one where I felt rather depressed by this news of violence by mobs of black people and the call for this type of abhorrent activity by Rev. Al Sharpton, it in no way, shape, or form a result of my medical condition. I acted as I often do when my favorite sports teams are performing poorly during a season as my University of Tennessee Volunteers have been in football since 2005 following a 16 year period where the program was considered one of the most dominant in the nation: I simply detached myself from the situation and waited for it to subside before I responded. I felt for my own mental well-being that I was obligated to do so regarding this topic because it so disturbed me emotionally. It made me realize that there are still roots of deep-seeded hatred in America left untended. I am not proud that I did this because if I ever have a hope of running for public office one day when I am more financially stable, I cannot simply turn a blind eye to these types of injustices. As I stated before, our nation made great progress towards racial harmony and equality for nearly 60 years. Unfortunately, the progress that has been made since Rosa Park's refusal to move to the back of the bus in 1955 which served as the catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement has largely been undone by the Left ever since Obama was first elected president in 2008. The Orwellian prose from his famous dystopian novel Animal Farm (1945) remains as true today with regards to racial tensions and the laws which been been enacted that engender such conditions within our society that it actually appears as if the black community has greater rights guaranteed by legal statutes than those within the white or any other racial or ethnic demographic, when he wrote these words on the late page of the book:
(Above: British author and war correspondent George Orwell, who wrote Homage to Catalonia, Animal Farm, and 1984. Courtesy of Wikipedia)
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
I often wondered even during his 2008 campaign what an America governed by Barack Obama would be like. Would he serve as a source of national racial unity, or would the result of his being elected engender the single greatest division in race relations in America in nearly 50 years? I believe we now know the answer to this query, and it is not what I had hoped it would be. I did not vote for Barack Obama for president in either election because I do not agree with his politics; it had absolutely nothing to do with the color of his skin nor my firm belief even as I write this tonight that he is a Muslim who will endeavor in assisting international Islamic terrorism. I have never voted for a Democrat, nor will I ever. Obama has taken the political philosophy of socialism to a new and very extreme level in America today, and we as a nation have suffered because of it. We are altogether much poorer than we were prior to his 2008 election, with people earning less than ever before, the price of commodities rising disproportionately to that of the average American's wages, and of course, taxes have been raised at all levels of income to further fund a government that knows nothing regarding the concept of fiscal responsibility despite the president's campaign pledge to not raise them on the middle-class or the poor. Poverty is at an all-time high in the post-Depression era. The profligacy I have seen, and I am sure many of you as my readers have as well, has been astounding and disturbing, and the corruption is beyond my usually well-capable abilities of providing a sufficient and articulate response. I do know, however, that as Ronald Reagan used to state so often, we, the United States of America, are the last best hope for mankind on Earth. It is our manifest destiny to promote liberty throughout the world, and as I say this, I am well-aware of the culpability of many lawmakers within the GOP of violating this sacred covenant we hold in hand with God Our Creator when we continue to serve the role as interventionists globally.
One common stereotype that is actually true about the Democratic Party is that it focuses almost all of its political energies on domestic policies. It cannot stand to go a day without passing into law legislation that creates greater government intrusions upon the American people's liberties. I fear the day when we all are rendered to the soup ladle of government as our great-grandparents were during the Great Depression. It was during the Great Depression that the Democrats experienced the height of their popularity, and I feel like we are headed back to the conditions that were manifested in those grim years. Democrats consistently blame President Herbert Hoover for the initiation of Black Tuesday, and they would be right, just not for the reasons they would lead you to believe. Hoover was a big government Republican who raised taxes and enforced the greatest number of regulations on our economy that had ever previously been seen. He was a Progressive during a time where this collective of political ideologues associated themselves with no particular party other than the one in the region in which they knew they could be elected.
(Above: Jesse Owens running in track-and-field during the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Courtesy of Wikipedia)
It should also be noted that the Democratic Party for nearly 140 years was associated as the party of racism, while the GOP was the party advocating greater civil rights for the black community. In fact, Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican elected to the presidency, and he prosecuted the bloodiest war ever fought in U.S. military history in part to preserve the Union, but also to end the "peculiar institution" of slavery once and for all. For more than 60 years, the Republican Party dominated national politics; between 1861 and 1933, the only members of the Democratic Party to serve as president were Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was notorious for being a racist, as he was a fan of the racially-charged drama, Birth of a Nation. If you ever desire to read more about the period between 1877 and 1933 known as "The Gilded Age," I recommend you read a historical narrative that was assigned to my "History of the United States, 1877-1933" class during my last semester of college by my favorite professor, called Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1922 (2009), authored by Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University by the name of Jackson Lears, where you will learn a great deal about Wilson's racism. Wilson was raised on a plantation in Virginia as a child by parents who were slaveholders, and there is no doubt that this played a crucial role in his racism while in public service. It should also be noted that Franklin D. Roosevelt and his successor Harry S/ Truman, both Democrats, were also racists, and this could be made no clearer than in the account by legendary Olympian Jesse Owens, who set many track-and-field records at the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin during the totalitarian regime of Adolf Hitler. He had this to say, and it should not be taken out of context in any manner in terms of the truth revealed (Courtesy of Wikipedia):
"Hitler didn't snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."
FDR did not invite Owens to the White House following his Olympic triumphs under the auspices of Nazi bigotry. It should also be noted, too, that in Berlin, Owens was allowed to travel with and stay in the same hotels as white citizens, but could not do so in many parts of the U.S. Since 1936 was a presidential-election year, Roosevelt was afraid that he would lose Southern votes if he played Kowtow to a black man. Jesse Owens also publicly endorsed GOP nominee Alf Landon during the upcoming election. Furthermore, Hitler sent Owens a commemorative inscribed cabinet photograph of himself. Honors were not bestowed upon Owens by either FDR or his successor Harry S. Truman during their terms. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (himself an athlete of note) honored Owens by naming him an "Ambassador of Sports." It should be noted that Eisenhower was a member of the Republican Party, the first member of that party to serve as president in 20 years. It was not politically expedient for either FDR or Truman to congratulate a black man on his accomplishments in the Olympics as it would have ruined their chances in receiving votes in the racially-divided South, and therefore they showed no concern or moral obligation toward the plight of all Americans regardless race, ethnicity, or creed.
Unfortunately, we Republicans and Libertarians today are marked as racists by the Left due to President Lyndon B. Johnson signing into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson was a Democrat, but there was a larger percentage of GOP congressmen and senators who voted in favor of the law than those of the Democratic Party. Johnson was by no means a true believer in civil rights for black Americans, as his congressional and senatorial voting records will clearly show. In a conversation with JFK aide Ted Sorensen regarding this legislation (Courtesy of Wikipedia):
"I know the risks are great and we might lose the South, but those sorts of states may be lost anyway."
On the surface, one might take into consideration Johnson having a sense of moral obligation to the causes of civil rights, but let there be no doubt that Johnson pushed for this legislation to pass so that he could sign it into law for no other reason than for the purposes of political expediency. It is my contention that the Democrats were intent on gaining ground among voters in the more populated North, and with the great migration of black citizens from the South to the North during the 1920's and 1930's, this made it all the more crucial. He was one in the long line of great Democratic politicians who understood how to attain greater political capital by compromising his core beliefs regardless of their merits or moral virtues. Johnson continued the FBI's wiretapping of Martin Luther King, Jr., that had been previously authorized by the Kennedy administration under Attorney General Robert Kennedy. As a result of listening to the FBI's tapes, remarks on King's personal lifestyle were made by several prominent officials, including Johnson, who once said that King was a "hypocritical preacher." Johnson also authorized the tapping of phone conversations of others, including the Vietnamese friends of a Richard Nixon associate.
Partisan politics aside, we are in up to our necks as a nation with regards to this increase in racial division. Unfortunately, it appears as if it is a manifestation more perhaps of the black community towards the whites than the other way around as it has existed for centuries. This is not to state that there are no longer white citizens who are not racist; there are, in fact. Most of the members of my grandmother's generation can be classified as such, as they were raised during an era where racism and segregation in the South was the social norm that virtually everyone, including the black community, accepted as life. She never switched her political affiliations, though, to the Republican Party, as she can be accurately described as a New Deal Democrat since she was three months shy of her fifth birthday upon the inauguration of FDR in 1933. I discussed the issue of racism and the phenomena we are seeing today of the Obama administration favoring Islamic fundamentalist organizations tied to funneling money to terrorist organizations in the Middle East in its institution of policies through the politically-corrupt Justice Department under Eric Holder last month with my best friend, who is a nuclear engineer and registered Republican voter, though not as conservative nor libertarian in his beliefs as myself about my fears that we are on the cusp of a potential Americanized version of Apartheid, where the rule of a minority sector of the population outweighs the legitimacy of the majority. America was founded upon what John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson as, "the general Principle of Christianity, and the general Principles of English and American liberty." We have forgotten these important concepts that lent credence to the legitimacy necessary to the rule of law in America now for 224 years, or on June 12, 1789, when New Hampshire became the ninth and final state necessary to ratify the Constitution.
In closing, then, I will posit the position that we may legislate all we will in order to provide for greater racial harmony in America, but such a practice will ultimately prove fruitless unless all segments of our society tacitly agree upon the virtues behind tolerance to all and malice towards none in principle. I told the lady previously mentioned in this article that racism will always exist, and therefore will never completely die. We can only mitigate the factors necessary towards the end of lessening the severity of its impact on our society today. Rather than working to engender better conditions for the black community in the inner cities who are more often than not in the majority of those who are victims of violent crime so that they may rise above the threshold of poverty, the Democratic Party continues to exacerbate the problem by creating greater dependency and propagating the practice of class-warfare consistent with the philosophies of those who prosecuted the French Revolution as well as the authors of The Communist Manifesto (1848), Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. Both of the French Revolution and the philosophies espoused by Marx and Engels led to political and civil unrest in nations throughout the world over the past two centuries, resulting in the deaths of untold thousands of French citizens during the Revolution, some 30 million in the Soviet Union under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, and at least 70 million deaths in the People's Republic of China under the rule of Mao Zedong from 1949 until his death in 1976. Pol Pot ordered the slaughter of some 2 million Cambodians in the "Killing Fields" during his reign from 1956 until the Vietnamese army invaded and overthrew his government in 1976. All of these political figures and movements were individual initiatives predicated upon political ideologies as the polity of the most extreme forms of left-wing politics the world has ever known, and yet Adolf Hitler is considered to be more evil than the three Communist dictators I just mentioned who were culpable for far more deaths than Der Fuhrer. My believe that is this the case is because National Socialism (aka. "Nazi") is the most extreme form right-wing political belief, as was Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy.
But hey, as long as the Left has an ample and unlimited numbers of opportunities to tarnish those of us of the conservative and/or libertarian persuasion, they will continue to do so, as well as sway the pendulum of public opinion in their favor.
