“The Kerry-Edwards ticket is perhaps the wealthiest team to ever run for the White House. Do blacks really need these guys, with their $2,000 suits and $300 haircuts, telling them that they need government to solve all their problems, decide where and how to educate their kids and provide for their health care,” writes Star Parker.
Oh, to be nationally syndicated! I love writing, any sort of writing: blog, columns, journal. But it would be nice to have a national audience. Star’s column was recently syndicated, and in her latest she comments on Al Sharpton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention. In “Sharpton A Good Fit For Democrats”:
My particular concern is the destructive and wrong message that Sharpton delivered to all African-Americans in inner cities around our country who listened to his address. What did he tell them? That government doesn’t care about your personal life, your moral life or how you conduct yourselves as citizens and as people. But it is the government’s job to “guarantee” that food is in your refrigerator.
This is exactly what a community that is being torn apart by AIDS, illegitimacy, abortion, crime and 50 percent school dropouts needed to hear. Particularly from someone who calls himself a minister.
Sharpton then went on to infer that without political intervention, Clarence Thomas would never have gotten through law school. Another beautiful message to black children. You’ll never make it on your own. You’re a basket case without government. Don’t even believe that that black man who is a justice on the United States Supreme Court is there because of his brains and talent.
Is it any wonder that we have problems in the black community? In the Al Sharpton view of the world, blacks who are making it in our country today fall into two categories: those who are making it because government makes it possible for them to make it, and those who are making it because they have sold out and have been bought off by the white establishment.
The idea that a black man or woman has innate ability and can make it under any circumstances with faith, values and hard work is either incomprehensible to Al Sharpton or an idea that he perceives too incompatible with his career path to be given any credence.
I find Sharpton’s rise to the national stage embarrassing. That’s all I have to say for now. If you feel compelled to read his speech, here it is .
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A shame that the talent for rap-ability is wasted on self-promotion, instead of trying to heal the community as a minister of God. Chalk up another useful fool for the jackass party.
The plantation of the cotton fields has moved to the “Ghettos” in mind and spirit. All things considered, I’d rather be a slave physically, yet maintain a free mind and save my soul.
I posted a response to Sharpton’s revisionist history on my blog:
http://expertise.blogdrive.com/archive/67.html
Have you check this out?
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39729
John, yikes, read the article and found this really scary.
You probably skewed a few of his comments LaShawn…
Being that I am a moral conservative (similar to Alan Keys), I agree with the fundamental position that morality should not be based on socio-economic status…
That being said…the reason that I am independent as opposed to Republican, is for the simple reason that the Republicans OFFER NO SOLUTIONS…
Be Moral – Are you implying that Al Sharptons preference is that blacks be IMMORAL
Work Hard – Are you implying that Al Sharptons preference is that blacks be lazy
Now, I am 100% anti-abortion, anti-homosexual “special rights” and I believe in the philosophy of capitalism as an economic theory.
That being said…there is no sense of SOCIAL JUSTICE in the republican party, and hence I am against it not only as an issue of faith (being that I am Christian) but also as a black man.
Now, all that being said, I think Sharpton is the one who sold out. The moment he said (if you read the speech) “When he looked in their eyes” meaning the two John’s, he new they would do what they said they would do. Uh huh, what is that really for black folks in America? Nada
LaShawn–
Well, you’re national. I was in Dayton, Ohio and I’m now in Montgomery, Alabama. I’ve noticed other readers from all over the country.
And, I guess you could say you’re self-sindicated!
Your audience may be smaller than you wish, but we’re here, and we keep reading.
I enjoy readings from conservative christian view of the world. Your website, breakpoint, and some of the columnists at townhall.com are my favorite sites to read.
It’s odd — I thought Black History Month was devoted to the stories of those who achieved great things, especially during the days of Jim Crow and even before. I don’t remember Frederick Douglass being particularly helped by the federal government – he was completely self-taught, for sure. There were Benjamin Banneker, George Washington Carver, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth — yes, white people “helped” them, but most of the effort was their own. Why not hold these figures up as role models – in what it means to be “authentically black”, if there’s anything useful to be made out of this term. I think if there was more reading of Douglass’s autobiography, people might see the value of education – which was valuable even when slavery was legal in the U.S. Too often people deny the usefulness of education, because, no matter what, “the Man” will keep you down.
Back to Hirez: Well, it’s hard to say what Sharpton prefers. He never seems to support moral living or hard work as a way to have a happy, successful life. Perhaps he’s doing some real preaching elsewhere, but it seems that all his speeches have a “gimme! gimme!” quality, claiming certain benefits as rights that people in centuries past, and people of other races, have actually had to work for. My own opinion is that Sharpton has no real preference other than to stay in the limelight and get his hotel bills paid for.
What’s interesting is that Al Sharpton doesn’t preach what HE practices. We may disagree with some or most of his approach to government. However, he practices hard work in his OWN life. He came from a poor background, and yet was able to rise up out of it. He works tirelessly for his platform
I mostly agree with Hirez, in terms of why I’m independent instead of being a Republican even though I agree with about 65% of their platform. There’s no social justice in the party, and that troubles me.
Great piece by Star. My only pet peeve is how so many black conservatives use “they” when referring to blacks, which makes them sound aloof. Until the “we” ethic thoroughly infuses black conservativism (as it did when Booker T. Washington was alive) and black conservatives get out far more on the ground in black daily life, liberals like Rev. Al will continue to hold the hearts of most black folks.
meep, you’ve stated exactly my disdain of Black History in general. People like Douglass showed what a rational human being can accomplish on his own. Of course, that example puts no money in Jesse’s or Al’s pocket.
Anyone who hasn’t read Star’s article is missing a treat. It’s been said a billion times, but it must be said yet again: The livelihood of “Rev.” Al and his kind is fully dependent upon the black American being kept as a whining, disabled child who is in constant need of intensive propping up, carrying around, financing, etc..
But there’s no soldier meaner and more effective on the battlefield of ideas than one who has broken out the “benevolent” liberal work farm after discovering that he/she has been imprisoned by those who pretended to be their best friends. Star, LaShawn- keep on truckin’…
God bless one and all…
This commenter actually made some good points. But he broke Rule #1: Don’t call me names. — LB
As always, thanks for visiting my blog!
Hirez – Your ideas of solutions are apparently different from mine. Look at it this way: Anyone can come up with anything at any time to try and solve a problem. The issues are the who, what, where, when and how. Solutions should not harm me or violate my constitutional rights, including my rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to name a few basic ones.
Liberals’ solutions often involved heavy government intervention. That’s one of the reasons government schools are a mess. The federal government was never intended to be involved in public schools, which is the purview of the states. Local control, not a centralized entity like the federal government, is best. Not only are public schools a mess, liberals want to pour more money (MY tax money) into a failing system that disproportionately harms low-income children (read: black). Socialist bureaucrats act as if money is their’s for the taking. They come up with inane things to “teach” and equally inane ways of doing it.
Not only that, they want to use my tax dollars to show kids how to put condoms on cucumbers. We need to get back to the basics in education. How were generations of children educated before Big Government took over?
In my view, there is no such concept as “social justice.” There is justice under the law and eternal justice. According to the Constitution, each of us is accorded equal justice before the law. Each of us is to be treated equally in a court of law and as justice is dispensed.
Regarding the justice of God, we are all lawbreakers. Unless we repent and receive forgiveness for our crimes, we die still in rebellion. God requires payment for rebellion. Either we pay for it ourselves, which is impossible, or someone else pays for it. What human can do that? None. So the lamb slain before the foundation of the world was offered to pay for our crimes in our place: Jesus Christ.
“Social justice”, meaning social engineering and manipulation, is a laughable and pale comparison to that embodied in God’s law and our own Constitution.
Molotov- I agree somewhat with your view on black conservatives and the need to be “more of the ground.” On the other hand, I think it’s time to change the paradigm. Being “more on the ground” is useful in certain situations, but I think some blacks need to change the way they think about “leadership.” The existence of a Sharpton is possible because some blacks still need a leader. We have to change that, not prop up more “leaders” with different political ideologies.
Elizabeth – Thanks!
True, in fact I believe the black Messiah model is on the wane. I agree that we should debunk the very idea of leadership as traditionally defined. What we should be promoting is personal leadership, and mass leadership. The Messiah model creates the perception of superhumans (Dr. King being an example). Then people believe, “well, I can’t make change in my community. Little ol’ me.” So yes, I do believe that the paradigm must shift. And when black folks did the mass leadership model – with the civil rights movement as a prime example – we did awesome things. However, black conservatives ain’t shifting it. Most black conservatives simply want to replace liberal black leaders as black Messiahs.
By social justice (where I agree with Hirez that this is a GOP weakness), I mean passion towards social issues. To me, it’s only social engineering if it’s coming out of government. E.g., why aren’t conservatives on the ground in communities organizing for their vision? Organizing against crap images in music videos (which demean women). Showing folks HOW they can take charge of their lives – economic workshops, parenting workshops, whatever – instead of just whining that folks don’t do it?
I do non-profit work, where liberals are EVERYWHERE. Conservatives and even moderates are missing in action.
“In the Al Sharpton view of the world, blacks who are making it in our country today fall into two categories: those who are making it because government makes it possible for them to make it, and those who are making it because they have sold out and have been bought off by the white establishment.”
How else could one understand:
“Mr. President, the reason we are fighting so hard, the reason we took Florida so seriously, is our right to vote wasn’t gained because of our age. Our vote was soaked in the blood of martyrs, soaked in the blood of Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, soaked in the blood of four little girls in Birmingham. This vote is sacred to us.”
No sell outs or beggars here. Just fighters.
Except, Actus, that the supposed disenfranchisement of blacks in Florida didn’t happen. The right to vote may be sacred to many african americans (but if you look at the registrations in many cities you’d never know it), but Sharpton or anyone else making a claim like that is playing on the fears and ignorance of their audience.
-SCSIwuzzy
“Except, Actus, that the supposed disenfranchisement of blacks in Florida didn’t happen. ”
You and I must be using different felon lists then.
Unless I’m mistaken, felons in many States have not had the right to vote for a long time, certainly well before 2000, or even before the Carter years.
If the number of felons as a % of the population is truly an issue, then We The People need to do something about Zero-tolerance, 3-strikes and Mandatory Sentencing. Especially damaging is “our” penchant for upgrading all manner of misdemeanors to felonies. Perhaps, this is where Sharpton should be focusing on.
If there was disenfranchisement in Florida, blame it on the inept local democratic party leadership, who designed the ballots, issued confusing polling information and generally ran a mediocre campaign in the runup to the election. The least they could have done was run a couple of useability tests to ensure that the average Joe could understand the butterfly format. But I guess that is to be expected, since AA basically ensured that the cream does not rise to the top.
If possible disenfranchisement was really the issue, then sue to recount the entire State, instead of cherrypicking regions. But should that have happened, Bush also had the option to throw a couple other States where he narrowly lost, which upon further research was found to be a credible win for him, due to democratic tactics of buying Indian and dead people votes. Undoubtably, for as long as they may care to drag it out, Bush probably would have still won.
Bottomline, Florida is a dead issue–plenty of research have independently concluded that Bush won. And Gore should have had the decency to stick to the rules of the game, instead of trying to create new ones out of thin air.
Imagine trying to play basketball without clearly defined rules and making it up as the game progresses.
Finally, seeing how Gore self-detructed, we should all be grateful to Providence that he didn’t become Prez and have to NOT deal with the aftermath of 9-11.
Andy:
Its not a question of whether felons should or should not get to vote. Its a question of which felon database is used to strip people from the voter rolls. Thankfully we just stopped the recent nightmare by showing how idiotic the process behind the current database was. Who was the moron in charge of that?
I think the retort to your Bottom line is in Sharptons speech: this vote is born in blood and is sacred. This isn’t about recounts. This isn’t about 5-4 decisions. This is about disenfranchisement.
Speaking of 5-4 decisions, one of those entrenched skin color preferences deeper into American society for at least another 25 years. Gotta love that SCT! They please some of the people some of the time, but will NEVER please all of the people ALL of the time.
There are some students who attended FAMU at the time who disagree with the idea that they were not disenfranchised.
As many times as we have evidence of typical burocratic bungling of records, why does it have to be a deliberate effort to disenfranchise “felons”? Seeing how bureaucrats are relatively immune to the political winds of change, it probably is a case of GIGO.
The IRS screwed up my tax refunds, does that mean there was a concerted attempt to pickpocket me? If so, perhaps I better get my tinfoil hat–they’s out to git me.
Following the current meme, I’d think it’d be more logical to assume that perhaps whoever handled my file probably could use some remedial math and reading comphrension. Especially since they went and corrected the error.
As I mentioned before, all the rules, and what have you, were pre-established prior to the 2000 vote. Who’s fault is it if certain people didn’t excerise their right to ensure their legitimate vote was counted?
I guess the retort to my bottomline can be found in Cos’s speech: “People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around. . . . The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not
parentingvoting.”“As I mentioned before, all the rules, and what have you, were pre-established prior to the 2000 vote. Who’s fault is it if certain people didn’t excerise their right to ensure their legitimate vote was counted?”
Well, they’re doing that now, thankfully. Whose fault is it? the fault of the incompetents that hired choicepoint, and actively told choicepoint to loosen their standards. Wait, thats not incompetence or negligence, thats someone going out of their way and taking affirmative steps to purge more and more voters on less and less evidence.
Philosophically I have a problem with your line of argument, since I feel that a government that depends on the consent of the governed needs to essentially bend over backwards to gain that consent, that the onus is on the onus is on the rulers, not the ruled. But, 2000 showed that thats not how the games is played in FL. So we fight back.
The students at FAMU weren’t felons.
Ah yes, ChoicePoint. Glad you brought up the chance to inject a Clintonista into the discussion.
Remember Sandy Berger? He is a member of the Washington-based Civitas Group, a homeland security venture capital firm, which, in turn is part of the Verified Identity Card consortium, which includes the likes of ;
ChoicePoint–deals in datamining of identities to compare vID card applicants against the government’s terrorist watch lists, and,
TransCore, which manufactures the E-Z Pass device that motorists use when zipping through electronic tollbooths to track prescence.
Years ago, my cousin did his Phd on pervasive tracking for Siemens and my eyes used to just glaze over whenever he talked about it–all I could think was, well, here comes the mark of the beast. But now I’m knee deep in RFID and we’re having our own issues where anything and everything has its own IP address.
If you’re involved in IT, then you should know that time and time again, customers really don’t understand what they are asking from a technology solution vendor. ChoicePoint . When they get vague instructions from the customer, the customer is going to get vague results–GIGO. In spite of the massive brainpower and technology resources, vID is a vast undertaking and there will be plenty of fits and starts before they even get halfway decent. Think M$’s hailstorm, better yet, M$ is to OS what vID is to ID database–in otherwords, bug infested.
Deliberate attempt to maliciously delete voters? No.
Unintended consequences of blind faith in technology? Yes.
So the short list of grievances are;
1) people were inadvertantly purged from the voter rolls.
2) bad ballot design-by-committees, which really had nothing to do with technology. Iwonder how they are going to handle Nader and ensure that people don’t accidently vote for him when they intended to vote for Kedwards, and,
3) a whole section of the Florida Panhandle, living in CST zone, psyched out of their vote by the media’s premature certitude of Gore’s win.
Tell you what, let’s see what happens this time around.
I think we can both agree that these disenfranchised groups have met the new, and/or same old, boss and won’t get fooled again.
But I agree with you that the govt has to be the one doing the bending. Unfortunately, this fight isn’t going to take place under some bloody banner, it’s about ignorance and ineptitude, and plenty of them to go all around and every which way.
I don’t see what sandy berger has to do with florida election officials asking for more cuts and looser standards — I do happen to think that most of the ruling class is corrupt and feeding at the public trough, while we get to see them fight over who gets more.
I still dont see the inadvertence, the standards were explained to me in a documentary, and it seems like asking for them to be loosened was anything but inadvertent, and i don’t think its that mystifying as you make it out to be, by likening it to IT contracting. Even so, calling it garbage in, doesn’t mean that the garbage wasn’t put there on purpose.
Yeah, the BBC did a real job on exposing DBT/ChoicePoint, but somehow, the VRWC managed to disinterest the US media.
Or was it the Clintonistas what did it so that when cHillary assumes the throne, who’d need FBI files on “enemies” when she’ll have everyone’s pertinents at her fingertips. With a keystroke, her cronies will make or break anyone. Now I’m confused…
Conspiracies are intriguing since one really doesn’t have to prove anything, just reasonable doubt. Oh well, we’ll see come what may in November.
Obviously should Kerwards win, we’ll get beat upside the head over the supposed vindication for 2K. But I wonder, if Bush should landslide Florida, will the disenfrachisement meme go away as it relates to Florida voters?
“But I wonder, if Bush should landslide Florida, will the disenfrachisement meme go away as it relates to Florida voters?”
The national money behind it may fade. But for true believers they’ll keep fighting. Of course, they might not fight so hard already, with the victory that’s been scored against the latest and dumbest felon list.
Ok hold that thot and we can re-evaluate in Nov.
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