Saturday, October 1, 2011

Slavery & Brainwashing in the 21st century

My choice for president of the United States, Mr. Herman Cain, has made waves recently (imagine that!) He has referred to the US tax code as 21st century slavery and has also said that many blacks in America have been brainwashed into rejecting conservatism and conservative candidates. In my opinion he is correct on both counts. What follows are my thoughts on the topic, which expands on Mr. Cain's idea just a bit to include America's entire dependency underclass.

Slavery was wrong, an ethical and moral blight on the South. My family were slaveholders in East Tennessee. My family was split as a result of the civil war, with war fatalites on both sides buried in separate cemeteries, and a split that exists to this very day.

It is a visceral issue, so much so that I don't believe it can ever be discussed or even understood via the sterile and arcane esoterica of philosophy.

The currency of slavery today is in its use as an excuse for political and social malfeasance on the part of progressives, manifested in demands for reparations, accusations of oppressive behavior and the guilt imputed to 21st-century white Americans by the hacks and baiters in the race-grievance industry.
Mr. Cain is right to bring it up. The race-grievance industry needs to explain how tripling down on the failed policies of the Great Society and its resultant permanent underclass, mass minority unemployment and government dependency can possibly improve life for the 3rd and 4th generation of that underclass. And yet they continue to support and enable their progressive oppressors in the democrat party.

What happened 150 years ago may color or even taint race relations, but that intergenerational oppression that continues at the hands of politicans, pundits and bureaucrats can no more be laid at the feet of 21st century Republicans and conservatives, than at the feet of Lincoln and his fellow abolitionists in 1858.

Conventional wisdom holds that America voted for Barack Obama to assuage its majority white guilt and ushered in post-racial age. Yet Mr. Cain's supporters are branded racists because we oppose Mr. Obama at every turn, despite our active support and intention to vote for Herman Cain, who also happens to black. Let me be perfectly clear - if Barack Obama felt about America the way Mr. Cain does. If Barack Obama carried the same world-view, policy outlook and personality, demonstrated the same character, conviction, courage and had the same qualifications as Herman Cain I would surely be torn. But Mr. Obama doesn't, so I'm not....

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when the choice has never been so clear.