Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we practice to play the race card so close to Election Eve!*
Lewis Diuguid, a columnist for the Kansas City Star, played the race card and opened up a can of Drudge-linked worms with a blog post titled, “Shame on McCain and Palin for using an old code word for black.” An excerpt:
“The ‘socialist’ label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.
“J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality.
“Those freedom fighters included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr….W.E.B. Du Bois…Paul Robeson…A. Philip Randolph…”
Commenters are letting Diuguid have it.
As some point out, Barack Obama is a socialist, and socialists come in all races and nationalities. I can’t speak for John McCain and Sarah Palin, but when I use the word “socialist,” I’m thinking of white liberals in particular.
One can afford to spout socialist drivel in a country as wealthy and free as the United States. These people actually don’t want to live under socialism, whose main tenet is the divesting of ownership from individuals to a collective. In other words, the old “share the wealth” axiom. These house- and car-owning fools get off playing hypocritical gadfly to a system that bestows upon them the right to enter into contracts, own things, and keep the fruits of their labor (after rendering unto Caesar, of course). Irrational and willfully ignorant, the whole lot of them.
Diuguid is wrong about the other men mentioned in the post. They were considered more than mere socialists. They were left of socialism. It is a fact, not rumor or theory or hyperbole, that the Communist Party reached out to blacks during the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., while not a registered member of the party, had Communist affiliations. W.E.B. DuBois, who helped found the NAACP, was a member of the Communist Party. Paul Robeson, singer, actor, and activist, was a Marxist and a Communist.
Communism is a nasty piece of work. It is a totalitarian system of government in which the state plans and controls everything. But that’s just a standard definition. Communism in practice has left a bloody trail from China to the former Soviet Union to Eastern Europe to Latin America to Vietnam and beyond. In a so-called classless society where one party rules, the government runs every aspect of individuals’ lives, both public and private. This blog post can’t do justice to the awfulness of communism.
It is so easy to tout the “benefits” of systems of government other than our own constitutional republic, because our system of government allows us the freedom to do that. No reasonable American wants to live under socialism or communism once he understands that how he chooses to live his life is secondary to what’s good for the collective.
I surmise that socialism and communism appeal to many blacks today because of what they perceive to be invidious racism. Their inability to rise higher in their profession or score a higher-paying job or reach the pinnacle of whatever they define as success is attributed to white people’s hatred of them. So is poverty. Since white people have all the power and use it to hold them back, it’s only fair to take from white people and give to the collective, so that all may benefit.
I’d rather take my chances and try to be successful on my own merits and earn my own way, without taking that which belongs to someone else. If I fail, I fail with a cheerful heart, knowing my failure belongs to me.
Related: Colorblind Thoughts
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*It doesn't make sense, but it rhymes!
