[A]nybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks.
~ Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., Sept. 24, 2008
Prologue
Rep. Alcee Hastings, a liberal Democrat representing Florida's 23rd Congressional District, is a perfect example of the pathetic leadership that has poorly served black America over the past 40 years. His brand of racist liberalism has given this pol a lucrative and influential career where he has perfected the art of exploiting social, racial, gender, economic, religious and political differences for his own Machiavellian ends.
Like many of his colleagues on the Congressional Black Caucus, or CBC, Rep. Hastings came of age during the 1960s and the apotheosis of the civil rights movement. During that era and before, the civil rights movement had legitimacy and was represented by intelligent, rational leaders like Howard Thurman, A. Philip Randolph, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, MLK, Ralph Abernathy, James Farmer, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Thurgood Marshall and others.
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I am convinced that the gap between the rhetoric of civil rights leaders and their vaunted promises encapsulated in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, failed to match the reality of the utter despair, crime, discrimination and self-inflicted hardship black people suffered under in small, medium and big cities across America. Black people quite understandably felt betrayed and became increasingly enraged as the civil rights movement became separated from the existential needs of black people.
Concurrent with the rise of the civil rights movement, the 1960s witnessed the increasing radicalism of the Democrat Party and its desire to obtain votes and power by balkanizing the American public – treating people not as individuals but as groups – blacks, Jews, Hispanics, women, gays, union workers, midgets, etc., that could be pitted against each other.
Divide and conquer
Concurrent with the rise of blacks in political office, Democrats systematically began exploiting peoples' gender, race, anti-religion, disability or sexual preference, and through liberal activist judges on the courts, began elevating these natural differences or "choices" as protected constitutional rights. The late 1960s witnessed the opening of Pandora's Box as the storied Democratic Party of Wilson, FDR and JFK devolved into a political party resembling George Orwell's "Animal Farm" – where every misfit, pervert, criminal, crazy person and bum in society now had a political voice.
The early 1970s witnessed black Americans in big cities across the country elect black local political officials like mayors, clerks, judges and city councilmen. Also at the state and national levels black politicians began to be elected in majority black districts.
However, a major problem with the rise of black political power during this period of history was that they followed the wrong political philosophy – big-government liberalism. Rep. Alcee Hastings and many of his Congressional Black Caucus colleagues – John Conyers, John Lewis, Jim Clyburn, Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee, Cynthia McKinney and others – all dutifully follow the ideas of W.E.B. Du Bois (1968-1963) who founded the NAACP in 1909.
Rights vs. responsibilities
Here is the blind spot of the civil rights movement: Du Bois and the mainstream civil rights movement leaders placed the onus for securing equal rights of blacks solely upon white America and none of the responsibilities of following what Booker T. Washington called " the fundamentals of civilization" upon black America.
This civil rights strategy made Du Bois very popular among the black public from the early 1900s even until modern times; however, many other critical-thinking black people held other views regarding black racial redemption in America – self-help philosophy, personal discipline, love of America's founding ideals, rugged individualism and morality espoused by Du Bois' contemporary Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), a self-taught former slave who later became the founder of Tuskegee University.
Rep. Hastings and the modern-day civil rights movement took the easy road of W.E.B. Du Bois and embraced the big-government liberalism of Wilson, FDR and LBJ, which along with abortion has virtually destroyed the black family in America. This is why Hastings can make the vulgar comments he made before a Jewish group in Florida: "Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks" – and the room erupts into thunderous laughter.
Race hustlers like Rep. Hastings have mastered the art of Marxist class warfare rhetoric. These techniques have made him and his colleagues in the CBC very powerful and influential leaders of the black community.
However, here is CBC's Faustian bargain with the devil: Black Democrat leaders at every level of government, including "community activists" like young Barack Obama, Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson, are only of use to the Democrat Party if they can keep the overwhelming majority of voting blacks on the liberal Democratic plantation.
Black leaders have achieved this monopoly with ruthless efficiency since the days of FDR in the early 1930s and in virtually every election since obtained 90-95 percent of the black vote for the Democratic Party. Therefore, the Democratic Party (blacks and whites) have a vested interest in continuing to foster black anger, mis-education, pathology, victimhood and dependency. It is the currency of liberal Democratic politics.
Palin: Justice Clarence Thomas redux
Finally, let's explore this important question: Why is Rep. Hastings, the Democratic Party and the liberal media so apoplectic and obsessed about Gov. Sarah Palin? Palin's mistreatment by the media reminds me of the utter fear and loathing the liberal establishment demonstrated regarding the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991.
I believe the answer is that secular liberalism at its core is a fundamentally racist and vacuous political philosophy. White liberals especially seem to demonstrate a venal, irrational hatred whenever they are presented with one of their special interest group representatives (blacks, women, Hispanics) that "made it" without their permission, approval or groveling allegiance to one of liberalism's government programs.
Like Clarence Thomas, Sarah Palin drives liberals crazy because she doesn't fit the liberal paradigm for women:
- America is an evil, greedy, racist, sexist, homophobic country and hates you;
- You are not an individual, you belong to one of our balkanized groups;
- You can't make it in America without abortion, one of our civil rights acts or Stalinist government programs.
Heroes like Booker T. Washington, James Farmer, Clarence Thomas, Sarah Palin and millions of other anonymous citizens from every walk of life who just want the government out of their lives so they can have the freedom and liberty to pursue happiness by their success have on one level helped to destroy these liberal myths – yet like a vampire, big-government liberalism seems to rise again.
In the final analysis, people of goodwill across America must put pressure on racial demagogues like Rep. Alcee Hastings and his fellow colleagues on the Congressional Black Caucus and cultivate competent, intelligent conservative candidates to run against these charlatans.
Until Republicans get out of their country clubs, put away their golf clubs, stop trying to compromise with Democrats and get a coherent, consistent, substantive vision to win the hearts and minds of Jews, blacks, Hispanics and Americans of every ethnic group, then I predict that another generation of angry, brainwashed, dependent socialist voters will continue to elect poverty pimps like Alcee Hastings to be the warden of their own voluntary prison.