I read yesterday that the NAACP is launching a new website, teapartytracker.org, in partnership with Media Matters, Think Progress and New Left Media. Its purpose? To monitor and broadcast “racism and other forms of extremism within the Tea Party movement.”

How irresponsible it is for this organization to waste its members’ dues and shred whatever moral authority they had left over this hunt for bogeymen. It’s not 1955, and the Tea Party activists have made it crystal clear that they reject racism within their ranks and, to the maximum extent a movement without a centralized command structure can, they are policing themselves.

The scores of black conservatives, myself included, who identify with the Tea Party’s goals of individual liberty, free enterprise and constitutionally limited government are proof positive that racism is not at the heart of the Tea Party movement. They are alive and unscathed, for starters. As Alonzo Rachel, a black entertainer, satirist and popular Tea Party speaker so accurately states, “if they were out to get us, Ida’ been got by now.”

As for the message, the NAACP’s attempts to assign sinister motives to the Tea Party movement’s stated goals is typical of the “Alice in Wonderland” mentality of liberal/progressives who harrumph, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

When did individual liberty become an evil concept which requires the full attention of the 101-year old civil rights organization to repudiate?

I’ll tell you when – when these pretenders realized there was power to be gained by holding the nation perpetually accountable for the sins of the past. This patently senseless alliance between the NAACP and the three leftist stooges is simply a microcosm of the larger, more insidious union between the self-anointed black leadership and the liberal/progressive movement, in which blacks agree to play the aggrieved victims of an inherently racist society, and leftist whites accept the “blame” as justification to declare the American experiment a failure, thereby mandating, in President Obama’s words, “the work of remaking America.”

The only problem is that while they play their socialist games, people are dying, or so lacking in hope they may as well be dead. The liberal/progressives have been experimenting on the black community, to the tune of trillions of dollars, since the mid-1960s, and to what end?

As I recount in my book, SELLOUT: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch, “those things have worked so well that we have a permanent underclass of black people without strong families, without quality education, without jobs and without hope.”

Seventy two percent of black children are born into single parent families, a consequence of decades of government anti-poverty programs that encouraged dependence while discouraging two parents in the home. Over 16 million black lives and $4 billion dollars since 1973 have been sacrificed to the liberal/progressive god of abortion. Young black men are dropping out of school at rates above 50 percent, while proven education programs are defunded and parental choice to rescue black children from hellish public schools is denied. The percentage of American wealth held by blacks hasn’t changed since the Civil War, while the NAACP’s liberal/progressive masters discourage entrepreneurship and free enterprise in black neighborhoods in favor of subsidizing government workers and unions.

If the NAACP were truly relevant, they would be using their prestige to address these problems. Instead, they choose to squander it on baseless conspiracies and tilting at windmills. While they are tipping over tables at Tea Parties, the blood of the black community is on their hands.

“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.

The ladies of The View just sat there, looking at him with frozen smiles. Sherry Shephard was nodding affirmatively and host Whoopi Goldberg even gave him an “mm-hmm” and a “yeah” as he uttered these words. Of course, I shouldn’t focus on audience reaction. After all, the “mm-hmms” and “yeahs” being uttered by Ms. Sherrod’s audience as she described her racist behavior aren’t supposed to matter, either – right?

Elisabeth Hasselback, the token conservative in the group who, bless her heart, is as sweet as the day is long but is there only because she’s great sport for the others as they fillet her on a daily basis, didn’t react, either. Maybe she didn’t get it or didn’t know what to say, or maybe she was afraid to go against the mood of the panel and the studio audience, who were all basking in his presence.

By the way, if The View really wanted to get my attention, they’d have Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Dana Loesch or another whip-smart, sharp conservative woman on there instead of Elisabeth. The problem is that they’d have to drag Whoopi and Joy at a minimum off the set after they’d been schooled, because they’d be foaming at the mouth! But I digress.

The president must have realized how the word “mongrel” in reference to black people came across, because he immediately tried to qualify his statement (“…that’s actually true of white America as well…”). Really? I bet if I ask my white friends if they’ve ever been referred to as mongrels, I won’t get a single “mm-hmm” or “yeah”.

I think the man knew he slipped up, because he started waxing eloquent about how caring for people as he does is more important than labels. So words don’t matter, Mr. President? Of course, he later went on to blame our racist tendencies on the “reptilian side of our brain that leads people to not trust others.”

Reptilian? Really? I thought Democrats were the party of science, and last time I read a book on physiology, there was no mention of anything remotely reptilian about the human brain. It was Satan that was the snake in the garden, not us!

I was amused at all the people online who were tripping all over themselves to defend the president and his choice of words. Context matters, they bleated, and he explained exactly what he meant by it, so there’s no harm and no foul. Those of us who were making an issue of it were criticized for being haters or, heaven forbid, conservatives. “Right-wing media goes nuts”, screams one online headline.

Let me ask you, gentle reader, the same question I posed to my online friends. Had it been Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann – I could go on, but you get my point – would the reaction have been the same? I think you know the answer to that.

Margaret Sanger, the eugenicist and founder of Planned Parenthood, frequently spoke of blacks as “mongrels” and established her organization to help rid the world of its “mongrel peoples.” In fact, “mongrel” was a popular term among eugenicists, chief among them Adolf Hitler, who frequently decried the “resultant mongrel people” that came from the intermarrying of the races.

Robert Byrd, the recently deceased U.S. Senator from West Virginia, in 1944 wrote in a letter to segregationist Mississippi U.S. Senator Theodore Bilbo:

“Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”

Ouch. No way to dismiss that one. “Mongrel” was one of the more common words used by the Klan and white supremacists to describe the threat of interracial relationships and their offspring, and it is used by them to this day.

The dictionary has many definitions for “mongrel” but this one best describes how people typically use the term: “Derogatory term for a variation that is not genuine; something irregular or inferior or of dubious origin (WordNet)”.

As a father of biracial children, I may call them a lot of things, but I can assure you that “mongrel” is not a word that would cross my lips, even accidentally. Some are claiming his use of the word was an attempt to defuse it and take away its power to offend and, for that, he should be commended.

Whatever. Since we’ve confirmed what we knew all along, that the Democrats are stirring the race pot in order to distract us from their failures, he needs to do a whole lot more to defuse the situation.

He could start by criticizing his Justice Department for their refusal to be race-neutral in their prosecutorial decisions, and order them to do their jobs regardless of race. He could publicly declare, as he’s done in the past, that the Tea Party movement isn’t racist, but simply an extension of a debate about the proper role of government that’s been going on since the dawn of the republic.

He could be a healer, but that’s not part of the campaign strategy. Oh, that’s right – he also said on The View that "we shouldn’t be campaigning all the time. There’s a time to campaign, and there’s a time to govern." It doesn’t appear he’s figured out what time it is yet.

Speaking of time, it’s well past time for Shirley Sherrod and anyone associated with her to go away. I don’t mean in a malicious way, just so we don’t have to see or hear them anymore. While Ms. Sherrod stretches her fifteen minutes of fame to the breaking point, and looks less and less sympathetic every time she opens her mouth, it was revealed this week that her husband, Charles Sherrod, in a speech he gave earlier this year at the University of Virginia Law School conference, declared:

“[W]e must stop the white man and his Uncle Toms from stealing our elections. We must not be afraid to vote black. We must not be afraid to turn a black out who votes against our interests.”

Since words matter, let me instruct Mr. Sherrod, who largely got a pass in the media because he was a civil rights contemporary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which makes everything he says OK.

The only blacks voting against our interests are the ones who vote for abortion despite its disproportionate toll and economic impact on the black community, who vote to snatch educational opportunity away from parents and children to protect a failed public school system and the teachers unions, who vote for the government’s half-century of social experiments on the black community which have destroyed the black family and resulted in three-fourths of our children being born to single mothers – and it sure isn’t us Uncle Toms!

For what it’s worth, these black radicals who think they’re so clever by labeling black conservatives “Uncle Toms” either can’t read or comprehend what they read. In my book, SELLOUT: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch, I devote much of the first chapter to debunking the myths surrounding the central character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin:

Tom was a noble Christian man who endured the hardships of enslavement with amazing grace. He refused an order from Simon Legree, his cruel white master, to whip a fellow slave and was savagely beaten by Legree as a result. He also heroically resisted Legree’s attempts to break him of his faith in Christ.

Tom comforted the other slaves, encouraged two of them to escape and refused to divulge their whereabouts to Legree. Because of this, he was beaten to death by two black slaves, Sambo and Quimbo, who acted as Legree’s overseers. Tom forgave his assailants even as he was dying and they were so humbled by his mercy that they became Christians too. So Stowe’s main character is a man of great dignity and Christian faith.

Tom represented Stowe’s deliberate attempt to dispel the popular minstrel show stereotypes of black men as ignorant, lazy and frolicsome buffoons. In fact, it was the minstrel shows that subsequently took the Uncle Tom character and twisted him into a happy-go-lucky, boot-licking apologist for his white masters.

So they want to label us with the phrase “Uncle Tom”, huh? Based on the actual portrayal of Tom as a noble and Christ-like figure, I suppose we should use the names of other characters in the book to describe those blacks who attack us because we refuse to get in line with the rest of them. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out which words matter.

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.

An important distinguishing mark of the coercive utopian is his preference for regulation as against education. The preference of the true liberal is for education (not indoctrination) and public debate which can bring about change. The changes of the past have come from philosophers and idealists who changed the values of people and the actions of people not so much through regulation (though regulation has a place, but through educating people to voluntarily change and move forward. The reformists of the nineteenth century and before sought to achieve reform by repealing existing legislation (such as the feudal laws which enabled employers to exploit employees) or extending narrowly conceived legislation (such as the right to vote). The reformists of the pre-twentieth century era did not wish or need to establish bureaucracies to effect reform. They did not call themselves "reformists". Later generations evaluated their work and labeled them "reformists". In the modern State, self-styled reformists are establishing bureaucracies and restricting freedom. If freedom of expression and the spirit of free inquiry (severely curtailed in the media and education systems) survive, future generations will not be able to point to much productive reform emanating from bureaucracies. They will focus on the great deal of counter-productive activity.

There is an element of arrogance in people who advocate "change" under the title of "reform". They should make the case for change and leave future generations to determine whether the change amounts to reform or is counter-productive.

The reformists are not necessarily Marxists and revolutionaries. There are probably fewer persons today who call themselves Marxists than there were ten years ago. On the other hand, the Marxist and neo-Marxist critiques of capitalism and property relations are growing in power and influence. Where is this leading? The influence of those who reject the dialectics of Marxism but are influenced by the Marxist and Marxist-influenced critiques of capitalism and property relations are, so far as the effects of their actions are concerned, substantially nihilistic. They are nihilists in the sense that they are committed to the undermining and even the destruction of existing values and institutions – but their alternatives are not viable. For some, a combination of regulation and government expenditure derived from taxation will be enough. Others have blueprints for a new society based on unreal and impractical ideas such as participatory democracy, social justice, equality, etc. They are against what "is" and their prescriptions for the "ought" are unrealistic. It is in this sense that their influence can be viewed as nihilistic. They are not revolutionaries and therefore they do not appear dangerous. But their capacity to gradually destroy without constructive alternatives is easily underestimated.

Communist regimes have been established in some countries by the forcible overthrow of the existing system. This will not happen in Australia and other representative democracies with a strong industrial and democratic infrastructure. The danger of Marxist socialist and other critiques of the tradition must be viewed in a nihilist sense. The problems of the near future for countries of the liberal democratic order lie not in a Soviet or communist style state or in a socialist state (socialism cannot ever be put into practice except in small voluntary communities). Nor is there a danger at present of a bloody revolution which would overthrow, in a short period, representative democracy, the capitalist system and its infrastructure. The threat that exists is of a gradual and slow undermining of the western democratic order and the growth of control over the majority by a partnership between big government, big bureaucracy, big unions, big business, big media and government-favored pressure groups (feminist, environmental, peace, Aboriginal, etc.).

Two examples may be provided of the modus operandi of the reformists and coercive utopians. Labor when it controlled States in Australia, and the present Commonwealth government, has enacted draconian industrial safety laws which impose very heavy and unfair penalties on employers. An employer will be liable even if a trespasser or thief enters his property, slips and hurts himself. It is not possible to quarrel with attempts to provide for safety. But the regulations provide for punishment and fines upon an employer who may be guilty of no negligence. The implementation of the New South Wales Act involved the employment of one hundred inspectors to police the Act and only two persons to educate the public about safety. Safety could be emphasized through an educational campaign. Business, bearing the burden of spiraling workers’ compensation costs, would readily accept an argument that more regard for safety will lead to a reduction in the insurance premiums. The emphasis is on regulation, not education.

There is a more serious implication in penalizing employers who have not been negligent. The provision seeks to apportion loss not on the basis of fault but on the basis of what is (spuriously) considered "equitable". The favored interpretation of "equitable" is that the person who is more able to afford the loss is required to bear it, irrespective of fault or innocence. The concept of fault lies at the foundation of justice in that it is essential to a system of individual responsibility and individual rewards.

The Australian Parliament established a Human Rights Commission. The early emphasis was on education – a research institute promoting thought and informed and balanced debate about voluntary respect for, and the importance of human rights. The papers which have emanated from the Human Rights Commission and allied agencies, at considerable cost to the public, have been papers stating the case for more regulation. The Human Rights Commission is not concerned about the totality of human rights. Such an analysis must take account of the importance of freedom and the need for duties and responsibilities. A right cannot exist without a corresponding duty. Human needs do not create human rights. But the Human Rights Commission is encouraging and inciting some sections of the community to demand rights without any regard for the philosophical and historical perspectives which should be paramount. It is also unconcerned about the notions of duty and responsibility. It selects or manufactures rights and exalts these "rights" over and above the important and basic rights of the liberal tradition which include freedom of property, freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, due process and equality of opportunity. These basic rights, that have collectively been responsible for a great deal of development and progress, are being undermined by a series of new social engineering "rights" created out of the air, as it were, and contrary to evolutionary development and western philosophy.

Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot are the twentieth century examples which illustrate the difference between idealism and reality, the theory and the practice of coercive utopianism. The internal threat that faces the democratic capitalist tradition is not of a Hitler or a Lenin but of numerous little Lenins and Hitlers, not committing mass murder, but springing up all over the place, becoming increasingly influential and trampling on the rights of individuals, imposing their biases and limited ideas upon the mass of the population, with invariably counterproductive effects. The real enemies of society today are not necessarily evil men – not the murderers, not the rapists, not the unscrupulous businessmen and not the aggressive trade unionists. The most dangerous enemies of society are men and women with impractical ideals who have the arrogance to believe that they have the solution to complicated human problems and who wish to use the police power of the state to impose their ideas on the public.

The reformists have been referred to above as idealists. This is somewhat misleading. Idealism is present to a lesser or greater extent but it is not all idealism. They occupy the moral high ground on public issues. However, there are other motivating factors which are glossed over and which are not adequately emphasized. A significant motivating factor, especially among the affluent reformists (many reformists tend to be affluent) and especially in politics, the bureaucracy, academia and the media, is what may be termed "false guilt". They feel guilty about the advantaged economic and social position which they enjoy and they take an easy way out. They retain their comfortable lifestyles. They support a cause or causes and ask the government to act to coerce other people to make the sacrifices. It is very easy for urban folk to be concerned about Aboriginal land rights whilst requiring the farmers or the mining companies to make the sacrifices. These sacrifices will in the long run affect everyone but they do not have the foresight to understand this dimension. It is easy to ask the farmers and mining companies to make the sacrifices.

This easy concern is a twentieth century phenomenon. The reformists of earlier times made sacrifices of blood, tears, toil and sweat. But the so-called reformists of the twentieth century take the easy way out. They make no sacrifices. They retain comfortable lifestyles and ask the government to act. They are generous with other people’s wealth. Perhaps when the government acts and the bureaucracy is set up they can obtain a position with a comfortable salary, a lucrative consultancy or a research grant.

Perhaps the most powerful factor motivating some reformists is envy of wealth and achievement. Envy of those who are achieving and doing better. This envy operates even with a person on a $100,000 a year income or even a $200,000 a year income. They are envious of the Murdochs, the Packers, the Bonds and the Holmes a’Courts. This is an important factor in the makeup of many coercive utopians. The envy of wealth and achievement is a very important factor, though many of them will immediately deny it if confronted with the issue.

They are very seldom confronted with the issue. The characteristic of the reformists is their unrealistic analysis of human problems. They ignore the experience of history and human nature. Academic analyses of human problems are becoming more and more abstract and divorced from the realities of history and human nature. The dimension which the coercive utopians miss is that a better world requires better human beings. It is not possible to make people better or law abiding or richer by laws and regulations. They focus on structures. Their emphasis on regulation is an emphasis always on changing the structures. Their belief is that if the structures and institutions are changed human beings will change. Capitalism and business are made the scapegoats for every problem. The fact, that in pre-capitalist and primitive societies human beings have not been much different, is ignored.

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.

She went on to say that the experience taught her the issues that confronted her weren’t black and white, but “haves” and “have nots”. But the damage from her earlier statements had been done. Once the videos went public, all anyone saw – and I include myself in that number – was a black government official denying service to a white person based solely on his race. That couldn’t be easily explained away.

The secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, contacted Ms. Sherrod and asked her to submit her resignation via her Blackberry – somewhat unorthodox and demeaning, in my view, but they were apparently trying to demonstrate their swiftness in dealing with racism in their ranks. Shortly thereafter, her resignation was announced, and to the casual observer, justice had been served – or had it?

After the fact, previously undisclosed information began creeping into the narrative, changing the complexion of what had occurred:

1) The incident she described took place two decades ago, before she became a government employee.

2) She was describing the incident as indicative of how she felt then versus how she feels today.

3) The white farmer and his wife immediately came to her defense. They are apparently very fond of her, and she of them. They credited her with saving their farm, and regret that she lost her job.

I spoke to a reporter this evening as the “conservative” voice on this issue and, while I’m not sure what she expected, this is what I told her.

This was a rush to judgment, exacerbated by the racial tensions that have broken out since the expose on the Justice Department’s apparent refusal to pursue the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party, and the NAACP’s resolution condemning the racist elements of the Tea Party movement and the leadership’s “continued tolerance” of them. She should have been given a chance to tell her story, but the White House was so concerned about how this would play out in the media that they acted before giving her an opportunity to explain herself.

Should she have told the story at all? That’s a matter of opinion. Some say it would have been more prudent of her to save it for her memoirs. In this era of camera and video equipped cell phones and easily concealable recording devices, anything we say or do in public can and will be used against us. People from previous generations haven’t adapted to that reality, and younger people show no discretion and don’t seem to care unless and until they are denied opportunities because of it.

Should the journalists who released the videos been more responsible? Depending on which side of the ideological divide you sit, you may have a different answer for that question. The videos released by Breitbart didn’t address the time frame in which the incident she was describing occurred; was that fact in the video at all? If it was, then someone made a conscious decision to omit that information. Whether they thought it was irrelevant to the topic, or left it out with malice and forethought, leaving that out was wrong.

In the very same news cycle, a series of videos released by a leftist organization to prove the Tea Party is a racist movement were found to have been edited to leave out critical information, like the Tea Party organizers forcing a racist to leave the rally, or another racist whose rants apparently occurred several years before the Tea Party movement even existed. Whether they thought this information was irrelevant to the topic, or left it out with malice and forethought, leaving it out was wrong.

Today’s news seems to be more about speed than accuracy, and for every slip-up, there’s a coup that will feed a reporter’s family steak and lobster for months. Think of the John Edwards story; the National Enquirer was fastest and first with the news of his infidelity and the “love child” that resulted from the affair. Once the story was verified, they looked like crack investigative journalists, while the mainstream media looked timid at best, and biased at worst. The pressure to put “hot” stories out there without fully vetting them is incredible, and it puts a premium on us as consumers of information to ask questions and reserve judgment until all the relevant information is in.

Here’s my conclusion. Both the White House and the NAACP were on a hair trigger regarding the race issue because it is a flash point in the current news cycle. They acted against Ms. Sherrod based on incomplete information, and did so out of fear. The White House, frankly, isn’t particularly comfortable with the issue of race, as I spell out in my upcoming book, “Sellout: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch”:

My observation is that President Obama is a reluctant warrior and a bit of an opportunist when it comes to the topic of race. He is clearly uncomfortable casting issues in racial terms and there are only three conditions under which I’ve seen him invoke race.

He uses the issue of race when he needs to generate a large minority voter turnout. Witness his 2010 midterm elections video appeal to “young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 [to] stand together once again.

The other time he discusses race is when he’s backed into a corner, as he was during the 2008 campaign when the continuing controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary comments from the pulpit forced his hand.

In response, Obama delivered his famous campaign speech in Philadelphia on race in America. Although not explicitly stated, he and his campaign staff clearly hoped all the race talk would die down after he’d addressed it.

Finally, race becomes a hands-on topic for him when a friend is involved, as with his condemnation of the Cambridge, Massachusetts police department for their arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates at his own home.

Even in that incident, he quickly backed off his comment that the police acted “stupidly.” He hastily arranged a beer summit at the White House between himself, Vice President Biden, Professor Gates and James Crowley, the Cambridge police officer who had arrested Gates for disorderly conduct.

As for the NAACP, the heat in the kitchen generated by their Tea Party resolution was already on high, and they couldn’t afford another public relations disaster, especially one that occurred at one of their own awards dinners. As soon as the White House reacted, they did, too.

Now the White House is remaining silent on the issue, hoping it will die down, and the NAACP says it was duped by the conservative media. There are no winners in this situation.

The irony for me personally is that, when I set out ten months ago to write a book about race in America from the perspective of a Christian conservative black man, I never envisioned the racial climate in this country to be what it is today. That doesn’t make me prescient, but it’s a reminder to me of God’s timing. We’ll see if the manner in which I address this sensitive topic fans or retards the flames.

And so I turn to Ms. Sherrod as my final word. The story she told the audience that night was, in my opinion, a story of sin, repentance and redemption. It is a Christian story, and one that deserves more applause than condemnation. I don’t know if she’ll get her job back, but as far as I’m concerned, she may have been a racist two decades ago, but she is redeemed today, and she’s a sister in Christ. That’s good enough for me, and I’m praying for her.

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.

Contrary to the message of this proposed resolution, the leaders of the Tea Party movement, a decentralized group of patriots who don’t answer to a single master, only to the principles of our Constitution and Declaration of Independence, have repeatedly and consistently spoken out against racism in our ranks. The NAACP’s ignorance of that fact is deliberate and disingenuous.

The everyday Americans who love their country and their neighbors, regardless of race, don’t deserve such vitriol, and the NAACP are "useful idiots" for their screeching liberal masters when they play this game.

This resolution is being pushed by a desperate liberal political establishment that has betrayed the American people and anticipates being punished for it at the polls in November, and a once-venerable civil rights organization that can no longer credibly declare America an inherently racist society when a majority of whites voted to put a black man in the White House, and gave him an 80 percent plus approval rating before his true agenda became known. These "80 percent plus" people didn’t become racists overnight. It’s not about President Obama’s skin color. It’s his quest to "remake America" – his words, not ours – that has us fighting back to preserve those aspects of America’s character that make her great.

In my upcoming book, "Sellout: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch", I make it clear that race isn’t what brings the Tea Party movement together:

I know its leaders and I know the hearts and souls of the majority of the participants with whom I’ve had contact. If I had encountered racism on a pervasive scale, I would have nothing to do with the movement. I know the leaders are attempting as best they can, within this decentralized grassroots movement minus hierarchical structure, to self-police. They’ve issued a number of public statements repudiating racist actions…

…It is their faith that all hard-working people can thrive in America if given the liberty and opportunity that lives at the heart of the Tea Party movement. If you want to see for yourself whether or not the Tea Party movement is racist, there’s only one way to do it. Go to a Tea Party rally. If you aren’t there to disrupt or agitate, we’ll welcome you warmly and invite you to observe. To all Americans who believe in individual liberty, personal responsibility, fiscal accountability and transparency, less intrusive government, and a greater reliance on family, faith and community over government, you have nothing to fear from us. There is no racial, gender or ethnic litmus test, and in these times of dramatic change, we need you.

The proposed resolution from the NAACP against the Tea Party movement has no redeeming value. It will not bring about harmonious change, and it will further isolate the hidebound black orthodoxy from the real lives of real people, black and white. I repudiate this action in the strongest possible terms.

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?

Something wicked this way comes, and it was unforeseen, at least in my mind, when nearly 18 months ago, we inaugurated a black man as the president of the United States. I think many people, whether or not they supported Barack Obama’s quest for the White House, believed that his ascension to arguably the most powerful position in the world was a turning point in America’s long and tortured history of race. I was in that number; I thought the conversation had to change, because a nation in which the majority of whites, as well as blacks and others, elected Senator Obama to be our president could no longer be called inherently racist.

I was wrong, and what surprises me is the corner from which racism has uncoiled and slithered into our midst. I’m not talking about the “Tea Partiers are racists” mantra being chanted by the liberal politicians, pundits and preeners in the entertainment industry. That is largely a fantasy of their own making.

No, the real thing is the virulent strain of hatred oozing from the pores of posers such as the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), a vile assemblage of ruffians that even the original Black Panthers reject. Or worse still, the Missouri and St. Louis chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization that I previously declared irrelevant and a caricature of its former self.

Many of us are by now familiar with the voter intimidation case against the two NBPP goons standing outside the entrance to a polling place in Philadelphia during the 2008 general election which brought Barack Obama to power. We’ve heard the histrionics of one of them standing on a street corner in Philadelphia, screaming that it’s time to “kill some crackers” and “kill some of their babies.” We’ve watched in incredulity as the head of the NBPP, Malik Shabazz, declares war on the Tea Party movement, Glenn Beck and the Republican National Committee while a female news anchor for Russian television asks leading questions to elicit the desired response.

It wouldn’t be hard to dismiss these people as sociopaths, including Mr. Shabazz, who may clean up nicely but whose heart is as sinister as those of his colleagues.

What’s more disturbing, however, are the comments by members of the Missouri and St. Louis chapters of the NAACP regarding the beating of Kenneth Gladney last summer outside a public event. Gladney, a black man, was selling Gadsden flags and  political pins to people attending a staged town hall meeting on health care sponsored by Democratic representative Russ Carnahan. Two Carnahan supporters from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) descended on Mr. Gladney and beat, kicked and stomped him, at least one of them shouting racial slurs at him as they did so. One of his attackers was white, the other black. The attack was captured on video and observed by at least three witnesses.

Needless to say, the attackers were arrested and charged with assault. Fast forward to last week, when the NAACP held a rally in support of the black thug. Yes, you read that right – in support of one of the two men that perpetrated an attack on a street vendor, who did nothing to provoke them other than being present and selling items to which they strenuously objected.

Just the fact they held this rally is enough to declare them morally bankrupt. Some of the words spoken at the rally, however, and captured on video – I love how technology casts light on the darkness – revealed to the world the evil in their hearts:

Back in the day, we used to call someone like that, and I want to remind you, uh, when this incident occurred, I was really struck by a front page picture of this guy, which we called, a Negro, I mean that we call him a Negro in the fact that he works for not for our people but against our people. In the old days, we call him an Uncle Tom. I just gotta say that. Here it is, the day after a young brother, a young man, I didn’t mean to call him a brother, but on the front page of the Post Dispatch, ironically, he’s sitting in a wheelchair, being kissed on the forehead, by a European. Now just imagine that as a poster child picture, not working for our people.

So what we have here is the NAACP – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – defending the actions of two men, one of them white, who beat up a black man selling his wares to make a buck, a man they outweighed and outnumbered.

Incidentally, when a local black conservative group protested outside the St. Louis NAACP headquarters for their lack of response to the Gladney beating, the head of the organization offered the lame excuse that he had not filed a complaint with them.

Let me pose this question – if he had been a common street hood caught in a criminal act, and shown on videotape being beaten by a couple of cops, would the NAACP have required him to file a complaint? I didn’t think so. They’d be at his hospital bedside within hours, with television cameras and reporters all around, denouncing the senseless violence perpetrated against this innocent man by police who are clearly the byproduct of an inherently racist law enforcement community. By the time they were done, the victim would have been beatified as a symbol of racial discrimination, and they’d be fitting him with a halo and white gown.

Give.me.a.break.

I am reminded once again what Maryland state Senator Lisa Gladden said in 2006 in defense of blatantly racist images and slurs directed against black Republican lieutenant governor and U.S. Senate candidate Michael Steele: “Party trumps race.”

Reverse the ideologies and make the thugs conservative and Gladney hawking leftist paraphernalia, and Gladney would have had all the representation he needed.

Speaking of representation, that brings me to the most troubling incident of all. We are learning, as courageous lawyers formerly with the Department of Justice come forward, that the department refuses to prosecute the voter intimidation case against the NBPP because they choose not to pursue cases where the victims are white and the perpetrators people of color. In other words, you’re only in need of justice if you’re non-white.

Of course, this is the same Department of Justice that’s practically falling all over itself trying to find ways to prosecute the state of Arizona in defense of illegal aliens, primarily from Mexico. Non-citizens who are here illegally warrant more protection than whites and people of color who don’t follow the herd.

Racism is not exclusive to white people. The distorted language of the liberal claims that blacks and other minorities cannot be racist because only whites have the power to discriminate. Racism and discrimination are two different things; one can most certainly be racist, whether they have the ability to act on it or not.

Black conservative political commentator Lenny McAllister described this abdication of justice quite eloquently:

When the Department of Justice is capable of determining that the rights of non-citizens must be championed as it condones American citizens being intimidated and threatened while enacting their right to vote, we are approaching a point in America where justice is too subjective to be counted on to provide stability and equality for our citizens on a regular basis.

Maybe this is the revenge that many black people sought in the wake of Barack Obama’s election. My daughter complained to me the day after the election that a group of black students at the high school surrounded her white friend and taunted him, saying, “We’re in charge now. What’cha gonna do about it, whitey?”

One of the NBPP thugs at the polling station in Philadelphia remarked to a white poll worker, "[Y]ou are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker."

In my upcoming book, “Sellout: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch”, I offer the following thought:

We have a recent history of defending our scoundrels and rationalizing their actions because of the injustices committed against our ancestors. However, the weights and measures of equal justice are right and wrong, not black and white. If we are to be credible partners in calibrating the scales of justice so they work equally for everyone, we need to stand for right and wrong above all else.

The only man who can recalibrate the scales of justice, so that good is good and evil is evil, is President Obama. I am not optimistic, given that he’s the one that encouraged the federal government’s lawsuit against the Arizona illegal alien law. Given the fact it mirrors federal law, it’s like suing oneself, isn’t it?

Be the man you presented yourself to be during the 2008 campaign, Mr. President. Call evil by its name – or else evil becomes you.

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.

I take the path of forgiveness and grace, so I’m an unabashed patriot when it comes to America. For me only God and family take precedence over my home country. I am proud to be an American, I am not the least bit ashamed of her and I thank the Lord every day for putting me here over all the other nations on earth. In “Two Americas,” I offered my vision of America:

One America sees our nation as a “shining city on a hill,” a force for good in the world, and richly blessed by God because we have used our power to advance freedom rather than tyranny, seeking only enough territory to bury our dead from the wars fought in foreign lands to save millions of people from oppression.

We are a people of character, and we believe there is good and evil in the world and that anyone with common sense knows the difference.

We are a people that care for one another and we are generous to the world, giving more private charity to other countries than any nation past or present. We are compassionate toward those who cannot help themselves and will help those who can to become productive and self-sufficient citizens. We believe that the true power of our nation is in its people and not in its government, and it is our emphasis on individual liberty and initiative that has made us strong.

Our systems of government and economics are the envy of the world, and our freedoms are a beacon to millions who came here, and continue to come, to realize their dreams of creating wealth for themselves and their families, or to worship in peace, or simply to breathe the rarified air of liberty. More people seek to come to America than to leave.

While we know we are not perfect, we have unceasingly strained toward the goal of living up to our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, three of the most transformative secular documents in world history.

With our combination of military might, the largest economy in world history, and a higher number of immigrants than any other nation that has ever existed, we believe that we are exceptional, and we are a stabilizing and comforting presence in the world. In short, we are proud of America and to be called Americans.

I gave years of my life in her defense as a member of the armed forces, as did my father before me, so I’ve always been immersed in the symbols and ceremony of my country–the uniform bedecked with American emblemology, the Stars and Stripes, the National Anthem, the marches, the patriotic speeches on Memorial Day, Veterans’ Day, the Fourth of July, and so on.

When I lived overseas, either as a military dependent or an intelligence officer, I was always mindful of the fact that my words and actions reflected not only on me but also the United States of America and I tried to conduct myself accordingly.

For all the folks who think this country is irredeemably flawed, precious few of them ever actually go away to some other more enlightened land, wherever that may be. In fact, more people have emigrated from foreign lands to America than any other nation in history, and over a million people a year legally come to our country from distant shores. Over a million immigrants became American citizens in 2008.

Entertainers who use the bully pulpit with which they’ve been blessed to bash America are particularly loathsome to me. They went from waiting tables, playing in neighborhood bands or doing local dinner theater to the starry heights of fame and fortune because millions of ordinary Americans bought tickets to their movies, watched their TV shows, attended their concerts, bought their CDs or downloaded their MP3s. Yet they don’t hesitate to mock and denigrate those same Americans for their heartland values, their faith or their love of country. They’ve forgotten the phrase “Only in America” and never stop for one minute to think of how blessed they are to live in a nation where they can find such success.

Why do I love America? Simply put, it was the first nation founded on the principle that each individual human being is precious in the sight of God. Everything good that has happened in America since its founding has been predicated on our constant striving toward that goal.

I don’t see the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, the end of Jim Crow laws and the ascension of a black man to the White House as steps taken reluctantly, but rather the inevitable consequence of a nation whose constitutional law is ordered to the dignity and worth of the individual human person.

Our Founding Fathers were troubled by slavery even as they drafted the U.S. Constitution, and although they made concessions in the interest of preserving the Union, they knew it was a moral evil that could not long survive in a nation founded in liberty. America’s history tells me that its good-willed citizens are always straining, stretching and clawing toward the ideal under which our nation was founded, and we will not cease until that ideal has been reached.

Hence, all major religions of the world thrive here. Even our poor have a higher standard of living than billions of people worldwide. That is why immigrants, with their work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit, are more successful in America than in the great nations of Europe.

That is why my ascension as a black man in America isn’t based on being in the right tribe, having the right bloodline or being in the majority or the faction with the most guns. I succeed in America because I matter as an individual and I am empowered to chart my own direction. As long as I play by the rules, there are thousands of fellow Americans, some I’ve not even met yet, who stand ready to help me and cheer me on.

It was America, not the supposedly more enlightened European or Asian nations, which elected a person of color to lead the most powerful, most prosperous, most influential nation that has ever existed on the planet. Am I better off in America than in any other country in the world, even as a black man? To quote a certain former governor of Alaska, “You betcha!”

Even as President Obama travels around the world apologizing for America’s sins, a dubious exercise from my perspective as a veteran assigned to help defend freedom in foreign lands we liberated from tyranny, I have two observations of note. America, unlike empires past, never stays where it is not wanted and almost always leaves a nation better than it was when we first arrived.

From the shores of Normandy to the beaches of the south Pacific, most of the world owes its prosperity and freedom to the United States of America. Whatever the circumstances that led us to be where we are, certainly the people of our armed forces, if not the government, have always tried to do the right thing by our fellow human beings. We have generously given more in charity and shed more blood for the betterment of our world than any other nation and for that I make no apologies.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a speech to British ambassadors in London:

I am not surprised by anti-Americanism; but it is a foolish indulgence. For all their faults and all nations have them, the U.S. are a force for good; they have liberal and democratic traditions of which any nation can be proud. I sometimes think it is a good rule of thumb to ask of a country: are people trying to get into it or out of it? It’s not a bad guide to what sort of country it is.

It is a sobering sign when the chief executive of the nation from which America declared its independence 233 years ago understands the exceptional nature of America more than many of its own citizens. For me, America is John Winthrop’s “shining city on a hill” and she stands as a beacon to human beings everywhere.

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.

I’m sure many of us can point to the signs over the years that signaled the organization was nearing the end of its useful life. It has increasing become more strident and isolated as it has proven inadequate to address today’s challenges. It’s as if the organization is stuck in a time warp where it’s perpetually 1955 and we’re all still being forced to the back of the bus.

Two episodes this year, however, epitomized the NAACP’s slide into irrelevance.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the old joke about California being comprised of fruits and nuts, but the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP wins the “fruitcake of the year” award for their recent demand that Hallmark pull a certain greeting card from the shelves of stores in the Los Angeles area.

In what looked like a setup for a Dave Chappelle skit, a group of solemn, middle-aged black people stood around a microphone-bedecked lectern, and declared an outer space themed Hallmark graduation audio card was racist because the character uttered the phrase “black hole.”

Here’s where the Dave Chappelle humor comes in. It’s not that they find the phrase “black hole” offensive, though I’ve heard some blacks do take offense at the term; I guess they think these outer space phenomena were named by a sect of racist astronomers.

No, it’s that they believe the character is actually saying “black ho.” The TV report shows these middle-aged to elderly black women listening to the card and declaring that the character is indeed uttering the phrase “black ho.”

Now, as I’m listening to the video of this episode, I’m hearing the same audio they heard, without the benefit of being physically present and hearing the audio card first-hand. I can hear the character in the card clearly and unmistakably saying “black hole.”

Frankly, as this story made the rounds of the news sites and blogosphere, I felt a little sorry for these folks. They looked old enough to be my parents or grandparents, and here they were being ridiculed by the entire nation. Nonetheless, Hallmark took them seriously enough to pull the card off the shelves, a card that had been in circulation for three years without complaint.

The notion that a major American corporation today would even produce something for sale that was racially offensive is foolish on its face. I’ve been in the corporate world, and they are exacting about issues related to race, gender and diversity in general, both within the workplace and in their dealings with customers.

The Los Angeles NAACP press conference was a pathetic, sad display by an organization that is practically out of reasons to exist and is reduced to imagining racial slights from audio greeting cards. These public displays of pique make us seem thin-skinned and hypersensitive or, in this specific instance, hard of hearing and delusional.

Nothing, however, prepared me for what the national office of the NAACP did this week. Mere days before the anniversary of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, NAACP President and CEO Ben Jealous issued a statement praising Senator Robert F. Byrd of West Virginia, who died on June 28th.

He said Byrd’s life “reflects the transformative power of this nation…[He] went from being an active member of the KKK to a being a stalwart supporter of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and many other pieces of seminal legislation that advanced the civil rights and liberties of our country.”

Jealous went on to say, “He stood with us on many issues of crucial importance to our members from the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, the historic health-care legislation of 2010 and his support for the Hate Crimes Prevention legislation.” He concludes by saying, “Senator Byrd was a master of the Senate Rules, and helped strategize passage of legislation that helped millions of Americans…He will be sorely missed.”

Never in my most fevered moments would I have imagined the NAACP praising a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, a man their statement erroneously credited with support for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act when, in fact, he stood in virulent opposition to both.

He was part of an 83-day filibuster, using his expertise as “master of the Senate Rules” to block the Civil Rights Act from passage. He personally filibustered the bill for 14 hours. President Johnson eventually turned to Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen and the Republicans to help him broker a deal with supportive Democrats and break the filibuster.

He also voted against Thurgood Marshall’s appointment as the nation’s first black Supreme Court Justice. He opposed statehood for D.C., and voted against vouchers for poor, mostly black children in D.C. to attend private schools. As recently as 2001, he publicly uttered the phrase “white nigger” twice in the same interview, and was forced to apologize for the use of the term.

I know he publicly changed his views over the years and apologized for his racist past. As a Christian, I’m commanded to forgive others as I’ve been forgiven. Only God knows the true nature of his heart, and he now stands before Him in judgment to determine his eternal destiny. Given the totality of his history, however, I think an appropriate response of the NAACP to his passing would have been silence.

Much of the NAACP’s praise for Senator Byrd revolved around his support for government social programs that have destroyed black families, turned millions of us into permanent wards of the federal government, and held us in a perpetual state of victimhood and isolation from the greater society. As Daily Caller columnist Mike Riggs declares in a recent article, the NAACP could forgive even a former Klansman as long as he kept filling up the trough.

In my book, Sellout: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch, I point out the fact that white liberal politicians, when caught in a racist gaffe, are quick to rattle off all the wonderful things they do for black people:

One of the more amusing things about white liberal Democrats is that, every now and then, their true feelings about black people will slip out and the resulting firestorm has them stumbling all over themselves to not only apologize, but also to tell blacks all the great things they’ve done to advance their civil rights.

Yeah, those things have worked so well that we have a permanent underclass of black people without strong families, without quality education, without jobs and without hope.

When it comes to substantive reform, like the repeal of the death tax so black families and businesses can inherit and build generational wealth, Senator Bryd and the NAACP were in lockstep against it. The percentage of black wealth in America hasn’t changed since the Civil War, but the NAACP is so afraid that white people might also benefit from a repeal of the death tax that they don’t care if blacks are hurt by its retention in the tax code.

What about parental choice in schools so our black youth can get a quality education and break the cycle of poverty, homelessness, indiscriminate procreation, crime and death? Not a chance with Senator Byrd and his bosom buddies at the NAACP. They’d rather see sub-50% graduation rates, and reading and mathematics scores in the bottom tier, than try and save today’s generation, and those that follow, from hopelessness and despair.

If you’re a dues-paying member of the NAACP, thinking their mission is to help black people, I encourage you to look around for organizations that are working in your neighborhoods to address the real problems plaguing the black community.

In my county, a chapter of the Concerned Black Men has mentored black boys and taught them everything from job interview skills to proper table etiquette for 15 years. The organization also offers annual scholarships to young black students from the four local high schools.

Many churches offer training in business development and finance so aspiring black entrepreneurs can establish financial independence and build legacy wealth they can pass to their children.

Charter schools are raising graduation rates and test scores in some of the most challenging urban areas in the nation, and they are exposing the lie that black children cannot or will not learn.

If black people are to stand side by side with their fellow Americans as equal heirs to the American dream, they will do so through higher levels of education, economic independence, and the development of practical life skills, so they can be victors rather than victims.

The reason I titled my book Sellout is because that’s the charge often levied against black conservatives like me for promoting self-reliance over collective victimhood and grievance politics.

After the NAACP’s warm embrace of Senator Byrd, who exchanged the visible and violent racism of the Klan for the condescending and insidious racism of government dependency, I’ve no doubt as to who is really the sellout here. And I don’t need an audio greeting card to know that.

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.

Since that time, President Obama has slowly but steadily revealed an innate hostility to the private sector and free enterprise. In a May 13, 2009 commencement speech at Arizona State University, he declared the pursuit of happiness a “poverty of ambition.”

Free enterprise has created more jobs, generated more wealth for families, lifted more people out of poverty, and bettered more lives than any government program in recorded history. The only “poverty of ambition” apparent to me is President Obama’s lack of experience making a payroll, producing goods or services that people want to buy, and raising the quality of life for employees, customers and the community.

On April 28, 2010, President Obama told an audience in Quincy, Illinois, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” Putting a ceiling on the value of a corporate executive, and that person’s leadership of and contribution to the growth of a great enterprise, makes perfect sense to him.

I’m willing to wager, however, he’d never impose the same standard on his friend Oprah Winfrey (net worth over $2.3 billion), or his favorite sports figures like current Washington Redskins quarterback Donovan McNabb (over $9.5 million a year). He isn’t questioning whether Scarlett Johansson, a 25 year old actress, deserves to make $14 million a year  when the median income for a woman of her age and educational attainment is a mere $21,117 a year.

Do I begrudge these celebrities and sports figures their success? No. Whether they are successful businesspersons like Ms. Winfrey, or highly coveted entertainers like Mr. McNabb or Ms. Johansson, they are being paid based on the value they bring to customers or their employers.

Inexplicably, a person who leads a multi-national firm worth billions of dollars, with thousands of employees around the globe, producing goods and services that people buy willingly, has the President of the United States chiding him and declaring, “you’ve made enough money.”

Then there is the recent announcement that he has secured $20 billion from BP to help pay out claims related to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. No one is suggesting that BP not be held financially accountable for the outcome of this terrible accident but, as Congressman Tom Price of Georgia said, “there is no legal authority for the President to compel a private company to set up or contribute to an escrow account.”

Interestingly enough, Rep. Price called the action, “Chicago-style shakedown politics.” When Congressman Joe Barton of Texas apologized to the BP executives at a subsequent congressional hearing for the “shakedown” to which the White House subjected them, he was met with a firestorm of criticism from both sides that led him to later apologize for his statements. I’m still not clear on why it was OK for Dr. Price (yes, he is a medical doctor) to use the word “shakedown” but it’s not OK for Rep. Barton to utter it at a congressional hearing.

Congressman Barton, I hope you get to read this. You were right – it WAS a shakedown. President Obama’s actions are reminiscent of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s raids on corporate treasuries, threatening to howl “racism” unless they forked over big dough. Your colleagues are cowards for not standing up for you.

BP is already paying damages, and will continue to do so because their livelihood going forward depends on making this right. I don’t think they needed the added humiliation of being taken to the woodshed by the President to the tune of $20 billion.

I can’t recall another instance in history where an industrial accident led to the government ordering a private firm to put billions of dollars aside for potential claims.

The escrow account represents $20 billion of revenue that’s out of circulation and not being invested in the business. Rather, it’s being invested in the political fortunes of a President who’s trying to show his constituents he’s tough enough.

The whole performance, from him looking for someone “whose *** to kick” to the $20 billion shakedown, is reflective of a President grasping for the right message to placate the American people before the November election.

The fact he believes he has the authority to make private firms do his bidding demonstrates he learned his lessons about free enterprise from Oliver Stone and Michael Moore, rather than Adam Smith and Milton Friedman.

He may declare “I am not an ideologue”, but don’t watch his lips move. You’ll be deceived. His actions, beginning with that March weekend in 2009, speak volumes.