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When does a game of "divide and conquer" turn suicidal and become a
game of "divide and destroy"?
After an election campaign during which the vice president emphasized
class warfare and slyly incited the racial fears of non-whites, the
agitated constituency of the "downtrodden" and "discriminated" cannot
always be set aside. Under the auspices of a disputed election, in
fact, they can be further employed -- in a self-serving but potentially
dangerous manner.
We should recall the outcome of another disputed vote some years
back. It was the vote of a white jury in Southern California, in the
trial of L.A. police officers who used force against a black motorist
named Rodney King. The trial was legal, the police officers were
acquitted, but L.A. experienced an uprising. Thousands of buildings
were torched, stores were looted, dozens were killed as armed troops
were called in. It was an ugly mess. Summoned before television
cameras, the Republican governor of California, Pete Wilson, looked as
if he'd wet his pants. The nation's Republican president, George W.'s
father, shamelessly assured that the acquitted police officers
would be tried a second time for the same acts, violating their Fifth
Amendment rights. Needless to say, the accused police officers were
sent to prison. The mob had spoken, the Constitution was shelved, as a
shabby and tenuous peace was restored.
I call this peace tenuous and shabby because a peace based on
appeasement is always of dubious value. While demagogues like Jesse
Jackson and Vice President Gore remain at large, there is no end to a
campaign that can only be characterized as intimidation and national
blackmail. The inflammatory rhetoric of leftist demagogues teaches the
humble masses, together with minorities, to despise and distrust the
well-to-do. It teaches that the system itself is tilted, unfair, even
rigged. It teaches blacks to distrust
whites and women to resent men. It is this rhetoric which justified
the L.A. riots and the O.J. Simpson verdict. It is this rhetoric which
intimidates white conservatives and openly threatens our European
heritage with cultural extirpation. The white middle class in this
country, hoping for brotherhood between whites and non-whites, has
clearly surrendered to a state-enforced demagogue-inspired
multiculturalism that villainizes their values and traditions, subtly
painting them as closet racists scheming to
oppress the country's minorities.
This sort of rhetoric helps Democratic politicians, in certain
instances, to mobilize votes. It helps the left to subvert our
institutions, paving the way to socialism. But we may soon find there
is price to pay. The divide and conquer game did not end with the L.A.
riots or the O.J. Simpson verdict. It is not satisfied with the victory
of political correctness at the nation's universities. The demagogues
have planted seeds that cannot be unplanted. Distrust and suspicion has
a life of its own. And now it seeks to impose its dictate on the
outcome of the national election.
As reported Friday morning, the NAACP is now going to Florida on a
fishing expedition to find a few hundred minority individuals who claim
their civil rights were violated during the Nov. 7 election. In other
words, the race card is being played with total disregard for the
potentially explosive consequences. For if the idea is fostered within
the black community that Bush won because black voters were intimidated,
then a Bush presidency becomes instantly problematic in terms of the
domestic well-being of the country.
Under a Bush presidency, will we wake up one day and find that our
cities are burning, that their minority inhabitants are rioting and
looting -- as happened in L.A. several years ago?
The dangerous consequences of demagoguery now become apparent.
You want to destroy a country? Tell 30 percent of its population --
the non-whites -- that they are getting a raw deal. Then use that claim
as a cudgel at every turn. Use it as a cudgel to get a non-white
celebrity acquitted from murder charges. Use it as a cudgel to try
white police officers for the same offense twice. Use it as a cudgel to
demand billions of dollars in reparations. After a period of regular
use, how will you
prevent this weapon from automatically coming into play when an election
is disputed? And if that attempt fails, what do you do with the anger
you've generated against the next president of the United States?
You don't just turn off anger as you would turn off a light switch.
If the NAACP and the Gore campaign want a race war in this country,
if they want to upset the country's delicate internal equilibrium, then
they should continue down the path they are presently following. The
whining protesters in Palm Beach who were unable to properly follow
their ballot instructions are nothing compared to torched cities and
mobs shouting "No justice, no peace!"
After seeing the behavior of Al Gore, the way his campaign
shamelessly used class warfare and racial scare tactics, we should not
be surprised if he privately approves the NAACP's potential challenge to
the Florida vote count. Because of the vice president's behavior, which
is hardly in the best interests of the country, we should all hope that
this election is decided on behalf of George W. Bush. The political
wisdom of the ancients warns us that the "shortest way to ruin a country
is to give power to demagogues."
In this context, Americans should remember the words of James
Fenimore Cooper, who wrote in 1838: "The demagogue is usually sly, a
detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a
great stickler for equality ... and is in all respects a man of intrigue
and deception, of sly cunning and management."
Looking at the two contenders in today's disputed election, and at
the kind of animosity that has been encouraged on the one side -- with
law suits and protests -- versus the dignity of the other side, it is
clear where the good of the country lies. Of course, in this kind of
dispute it is equally clear who holds the greatest advantage.
A person who will stoop to anything always has the advantage over
someone who is capable of shame.