“Don’t tell me words don’t matter! ‘I have a dream’, just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self evident that all me are created equal’ – just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself?’ – just words. Just speeches?… Don’t tell me words don’t matter!“ ~ Senator Barack Obama, February 16, 2008

For a man who rose to the presidency primarily on the strength of his words, presented in eloquent phrases and a soaring baritone, when he is divorced from his teleprompter, he can be surprisingly inartful. During his appearance yesterday on The View, a show that continues to amaze me with its lasting power, and I don’t mean that in a complimentary fashion, the President had this to say about black people when questioned about his biracial background:

“[T]he interesting thing about the African-American experience in this country is that we are sort of a mongrel people. I mean, we’re all kinds of mixed up. Now, that’s actually true of white America as well, but we just know more about it.”

I wasn’t watching it live – I can’t stand it and I won’t contribute to their ratings, although I know it wouldn’t make a difference. I watched the clip, however, and replayed it over and over to make sure I got it right. After the Shirley Sherrod brouhaha, I wouldn’t want to be sued for harping on what the video shows he actually said! More on the lovely Sherrod family later, by the way.

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By Doctor Mark Cooray

Note: Every now and again, I’m introduced to an article that’s so well-written and informative that it must be shared. This article describes modern-day American liberals to a tee, even though it is written about the Australian variety, which Dr. Cooray calls “coercive utopians.” There are so many excellent descriptions and phrases in this document that you’ll want to share them. The original article and its companion pieces can be found here. Read the professor’s bio as well. It’s enlightening.

The most dangerous enemies of civilization are not necessarily evil people. They are idealists (subject to qualifications stated below) who wish to use the police power of big government to impose their views and perspectives on others. They often do not enjoy majority support among the public. They reject the evolved experience of the ages. This is what distinguishes the coercive utopian from those who advocate restrictions on freedom in the liberal tradition.

The phrase "coercive utopian" is a more apt description than "reformist". It does not however apply to all reformists. It applies to those who seek to use the power of the law beyond acceptable limits. It does not apply to those who seek to remove necessary restrictions on freedom. Reformists (so-called) often do not enjoy community support for their legislatively imposed and bureaucratically or judicially enforced changes. They therefore hide their real aims and introduce coercive measures gradually and incrementally so that people do not know what is happening and the opposition is divided and diluted. Modern coercive utopians have developed to a fine art the ability to hide the reality of what they are doing under the cloak of moderation. Their efforts in this respect have been assisted by the general failure of liberal and conservative politicians (a few exceptions apart) and people who believe in liberal values, to mount an effective counter attack. Thus, the coercive utopians are idealists (subject to qualifications stated below), who wish to impose their views and perspectives on others. They want to use the authority of government to achieve their ends.

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The events of the past week or so have come so fast that they’ve made my head spin and my heart despair. We are at a place in this country on the topic of race that I never envisioned for the second decade of the 21st century, and we need to pull back from the brink before what happened to Ms. Sherrod of the U.S. Department of Agriculture happens to others on both sides of the racial divide.

In brief, here’s what occurred. Famous conservative muckraker Andrew Brietbart posted a couple of videos on his website, Big Government, that showed Ms. Sherrod speaking at an NAACP awards dinner. She was describing to the audience how she struggled to help a white farmer who had come to her seeking assistance because he was about to lose his farm. She spoke of how she helped him just enough to where he would report back to whoever referred him that she had done her job. She also spoke of sending him to a white attorney, “one of his own kind”, for further help.

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As executive director of Regular Folks United, I’ve devoted significant attention recently to the irrelevance of the NAACP to the real plight of black Americans. My articles here and here take the NAACP to task for fighting past battles and tilting at windmills, while the tangible problems go unaddressed – entitlement programs that stifle individual initiative, create permanent dependency and destroy the black family; low standardized test scores and astronomical high school dropout rates due to a failed public education system; black-on-black crime and a murder rate where 94% of blacks are slain by other blacks; an abortion industry that thrives disproportionately on the blood of black babies; and an anemic percentage of black wealth in America that hasn’t changed since the Civil War.

Now we have the NAACP doing the bidding of their liberal enablers and flailing at the supposedly pervasive racism of the Tea Party movement, an outpouring of grass roots citizenship in which I have proudly participated since hosting the first Tea Party in Maryland in March of 2009. I’ve attended or spoken at several Tea Party rallies since then, and the people I meet are good and decent folks who’ve never protested in their lives before now, but are afraid for our country’s future.

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“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” ~ Isaiah 5:20

Two events in the past two weeks have stirred a righteous anger in me that I can’t keep contained. Someone has to be unafraid to call evil by its name, because when we remain silent, that evil becomes us. I have seen the evil of racism rear its ugly head, and the silence from certain quarters is deafening.

What picture comes to your mind when you hear the word “racism”? Klansmen in white robes and hoods burning a cross in the darkness of night? A crowd of white onlookers posing by a tree, while the lifeless body of a black man dangles by a rope around the neck from one of its branches? The contorted faces of grown white men and women screaming in anger as black children are escorted to school by the National Guard?

How about two black thugs wielding batons, dressed in uniforms and wearing military berets, standing at the entrance to a polling place? How about a deranged black man standing on a corner, screaming racial slurs and threats of murdering children while the crowd around him barely pays him any attention? How about the leader of these men smoothly but wickedly dispensing hate on Russian television, an irony considering what Russians typically think of black people, while the so-called reporter goads him on? How about members of what used to be an esteemed civil rights organization defending the beating of a black man by union hooligans because, by selling his wares at a Tea Party event, he deserved the beating and was unworthy of the group’s protection?

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Note: This is an excerpt from my upcoming book “Sellout: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch”, which will be released in July or August of this year. Happy Independence Day!

Recalling the archetype of the “authentic black,” I suppose the expectation is that I’m supposed to temper my passion for America with my knowledge of her tainted history and keep her under constant scrutiny because she is still an inherently racist, xenophobic and sexist nation.

In this day and age, I’m certainly not supposed to be a political conservative or a devotee of the Founding Fathers, that group of privileged white men whose lofty principles weren’t manifest in their daily lives. After all, they owned slaves, stole land belonging to Native Americans and treated women as second-class citizens. According to the collectivist agenda, the authentic American black man must never forgive and never forget. Instead, he must characterize America’s moves toward righteousness as grudgingly done only under duress.

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As we commemorate the 46th anniversary of the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it seems appropriate to assess the current state of one of the key organizations which was in the arena, engaged in the fight leading up to its passage.

Every great warrior that lives to fight numerous battles knows they can’t fight forever. Some accept the verdict of time and move on to the next phase of their lives with their dignity intact, receiving the honor of their peers and countrymen for their valor.

There are those, however, who struggle to keep fighting long after their skills have deteriorated, and their colleagues are embarrassed for them as they stumble on the field of battle, a mere shadow of their former greatness. In that spirit, I think it’s time for someone to tell the NAACP to lay down their sword and shield before they further humiliate themselves and the people they claim to represent.

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I remember when I first realized the federal government under President Obama had crossed the Rubicon. It was the weekend of March 28-29, 2009, and the news was starting to trickle out that the White House forced the chairman of General Motors, G. Richard Wagoner, Jr. to step down after nine years in the role and 32 years as an employee of GM.

One word described my reaction to the news: speechless. I didn’t know what to say, but I knew instinctively that something very wrong had taken place. I never excused Mr. Wagoner’s failed management of the embattled auto manufacturer, but the President of the United States couldn’t fire the chief executive of a private company – or so I believed until that weekend.

The Washington Post called Wagoner’s forced resignation “an extraordinary intervention of the federal government into the management of a private company.” I remember thinking it was this president’s first overtly socialist act.

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Note: This is the third of three essays I wrote as a teenager that won national awards from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. By this time, I’m a sophomore in college and a cadet in the Army ROTC program at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. I received a Valley Forge Honor Certificate for this essay.

This is probably the most prescient of the three essays because I was concerned at the time about the indifference I saw in American society toward the practice of good citizenship, and I feared the outcome of such apathy. I think what we’re experiencing today is the direct result of the silent majority, overcome by the busyness of life, disengaging from the political arena and giving people who don’t share or appreciate the fundamental values of America the opportunity to take control. It’s not too late to take America back, but it will a long and hard-fought battle. We must not falter or grow weary.

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Note: This is the first of the three essays I wrote as a teenager that garnered recognition from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, PA. This one won the George Washington Honor Medal in the Junior ROTC category. As with the first essay I shared with you, if you’ll indulge the awkward grammar and phrasings of a teen boy, you will see the early stages in the development of a patriot.

By Cdt. Ron Miller

We have a rich heritage, one that we can be proud of. Since our beginning 200 years ago, we have shown the world what a nation of the people can do. Their hopes and dreams, their accomplishments and their ideals are what have made America great. But what are the main ingredients that make up the strong base upon which our heritage is built? The answer to that question is reflected in the minds of our founding fathers and in the hearts of the men who shed their blood for 13 little colonies 2 centuries ago.

The United States was a new and completely different idea. To form an institution constructed upon the rights which every individual is “endowed by his Creator” in a world of monarchy and tyranny took some foresight on the part of our founding fathers. The people of 1776 must have visualized the millions of people, the poor, the weary, those seeking freedom to do as they wished, and the people who sought to make a name for themselves, coming to America. Our country was, and to me, still is, the realization of mankind’s dream.

Along with the people seeking freedom, there came the wrongdoers, the ones seeking to gain fame and fortune at the expense of others. Crime has threatened to tarnish America’s legacy and corruption abides in the highest places. But to really appreciate the good, you must experience the bad. And only in a land like ours could the evil in our society be exposed and the proper processes of law carried out. This is the nature of our American culture; truth and justice will maintain and defend the privileges of those who are worthy of them.

I love my country; this I can honestly say. In America, I am considered equal to others; my race, culture, or religion is not held against me. I have the opportunity to live and work as I wish and the chance to study what I want. I can speak and write freely without punishment from my government. I can worship my God as fully and as wholeheartedly as He would like me to. My privacy is valuable to me and here it is respected; I am glad for that. I am not looked upon as just another person among many other persons; I am a unique individual, different from any other person on earth and I thank God that I was fortunate enough to have been born and raised in a land where my personal rights and liberties are protected and where I can truly be free.

Our society has not always been one of complete freedom for all of the people. While our forefathers were declaring that all men were created equal, people were being forcibly taken from their homelands and shipped in bondage to our “land of the free.” The first inhabitants of our country were being driven off of land upon which they and their ancestors had lived for centuries. These noble people were treated unjustly by men who supported the endeavor of “manifest destiny” and pushed them steadily westward. Even after some of these things were made right, prejudice and hatred remained. Groups of men persecuted others for their race, culture or religious background. Women did not have the right to vote for the person or persons that they wished to represent them in public office and they were not placed on equal status with men.

These wrongs have been righted by our own changing society. As America has progressed, our moral values have changed. And, largely due to expressions of opinion by minorities and women, great strides have been made in protecting the human rights of both groups. Today, members of minority groups have a strong voice in America and they have better opportunities for jobs for which they are qualified. The woman of today is now looked upon as a necessary part of our society and she is a great influence in America, not to mention the entire world.

They, too, can do things that they have never been able to do before, and their cry, “I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman,’” is symbolic of how far women have come. As our nation evolves, even greater steps will be taken to see that all of humanity, male or female, white or non-white, will be able to live with the liberty, freedom and equal opportunity that our society represents.

200 years ago, our founding fathers began a great tradition. We have kept that tradition for these past two centuries. The road that we have traveled to our present level of liberty has been narrow and rocky and we have encountered many obstacles. But they have been overcome and we stand with our heads held high and our hearts beating with pride, for we represent humanity’s ageless dream of human rights for all. The light of God shines upon the American legacy, for it expresses everything that He wishes for his children. Maybe, one day, that light will intensify in brilliance and shine upon the entire world for all eternity.

(signed)

Ronald Edward Miller