"EVERY UNION SOLDIER WAS DOWNED BY A DEMOCRAT"

RACE, REALITY, AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

"Every union soldier was downed by a Democrat" was a Republican slogan for many years after the Civil War ended. We should think about resurrecting it. It's a lot (as Bill O'Reilly would say) pithier than most of the nonsense that passes for political rhetoric these days ("Stronger at home, respected in the world." Huh?) It's short and to the point. And it's true.

As in any political season, as we run down to the wire, the race card flips out of the Democratic deck, and the left seems to think it can partner up with "Bush lied, kids died" to form a trump suit. Surely by now we are smarter than that.

Aren't we?

I can't say I was surprised by the news that the Media Fund is running blatantly race-baiting ads in minority-heavy communities, but I have to admit I frequently wonder just how much they can get away with.

It was bad enough when the Dems ran ads equating the GOP with church arsonists (it is little known, by the way, but the fact is that the bulk of that "epidemic" of church arsons was perpetrated by Satanists and other anti-Christian nutballs). But now the Democrats have come so close to taking off the mask of tolerance it seems likely that any day now they will let slip their real agenda.

After all, can a party that bungled a political dirty trick as badly as this one did with the "Bush was AWOL" story possibly sustain itself much longer? Any school child could have identified the font on those documents as computer-generated. Anyone with half a brain (or, as Mrs. Kerry thinks of them, resisters of Mr. Kerry's health proposals) could tell you that no one in their right mind would use the term "CYA" in writing a memo to himself to do something nefarious. It's like writing a list you leave in your car when you have it detailed that reads: "Buy gun. Buy rope. Kill Bob. Pick up dry cleaning."

The 60 Minutes documents are about as hard to refute as the Encyclopedia Brown villain who doesn't know that ancient coins don't have "B.C." stamped on them.

But here we have, on another track, another example of the Democrats' seemingly inexhaustible capacity for underestimating the intelligence of the American public. They seem especially certain of their ability to deceive minorities with feats of transparent misdirection. Consider these new ads. Apparently, they are targeted to black voters, and they assert that when President Bush talks about success in America, he's not talking about black Americans. They also claim that when Bush says we're turning a corner, "he's not talking about the corners in YOUR neighborhood."

The voiceover is a black man (although I remember Johnny Cochran teaching us that black voices aren't distinguishable from white ones). The ads urge minority voters to quit being "played" by the Republicans, who will allegedly be trying to prevent them from voting, and call the president a "rich white man." (John Kerry, one assumes, is only using "rich white man" as a clever disguise. He's really a small blonde black woman with a slight limp.)

By any means necessary, as they used to say.

The other day, John Kerry told an audience that the President has put the "no minorities allowed" sign on the White House door.

I wonder how Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Mel Martinez, Elaine Chao, and Rod Paige (among others) manage to go to work (excuse me, "slavery") in the morning.

It is amazing that a party that did so little to bring black talent to the forefront during its past administrations has the nerve to accuse the Republican Party of being anti-minority. Perhaps the Democrats have a little memory problem. Let me help.

It was not the Democratic party that was founded explicitly to abolish the scourge of slavery in these United States. It was, in fact, the Republican party. Moreover, the Democrats were the party that attempted to dissolve the Union in its desperate effort to retain the ungodly, inhuman, murderous practice of buying, selling, and owning human beings. Hundreds of thousands of good men, white and black, died in the fight to legally destroy the practice of slavery. The Democrats cared more for their tradition of exploitation than either the Constitution or the unity of the nation.

Guess we forgot that, huh?

And the one party that ran the South as a virtual prison for black people for a hundred extra, unnecessary tragic years was not the Republican party. It was the Democrats. It was the Southern Democratic party that terrorized and tortured black people (and Republicans) in the private fiefdoms that every Southern county became. The Republicans couldn't even get ballot access in the South, because the Democratic party was the only party there was.

Oh, yeah. Forgot that, too.

It's really amazing that the Democratic party has managed to create a mythology that claims that racist Southern Democrats left their party because they were so much more comfortable with the evil Republicans. Actually, the Republicans didn't become racists--Democrats became Republicans, hoping to have some chance of gaining elective office in the good-old-boy closed system of the South. Maybe some of them were racists, but it wasn't becoming Republicans that made them so. And after a while, most of them got over it.

The Civil Rights Act wouldn't have passed if it weren't for Republicans. It wasn't the Republican party divided by racism--it was the Democrats. It wasn't Republicans who joined the Klan and the White Supremacist parties. And maybe we could recall for just a minute who's been running this misbegotten "war on poverty" that has only succeeded in driving men out of their families, children out of their homes, and hope out of the hearts of millions of fine black men and women. Who runs the system? Did Republicans invent the dependency system of welfare? Did Republicans encourage men and women to avoid marriage to get more state benefits? Do the Republicans perpetuate programs to make bureaucrats rich and poor people miserable?

No, that would be the Democrats again.

And why don't people like Al Sharpton ask some pointed questions of their oh-so-close white liberal friends in the Democratic party?

Like, why is it that the only black on the Supreme Court was appointed by a Republican? How come Democrats can't find it in their hearts to put black folk in real positions of power? How come the leaders of the Democratic ticket are as white as they come? Who's that white guy that runs the party? How come so few of the blacks in Congress have real leadership positions? Why are Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and Rod Paige Republicans? Why was the first black man to run for President in a party primary (Alan Keyes) a Republican? Why is it that an unknown governor from a miniscule state like Vermont can be touted as the Next Big Thing and supported by the Democratic party, while long-time loyalists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Maynard Ferguson and Andrew Young are considered lesser lights--and when Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun ran for office, even the party didn't think they had a chance?

And let's talk about policy. How come Democrat politicians are so adamant in their opposition to school vouchers when black parents are practically standing on top of their cars screaming for them? Don't they mean it when they say they care about educating children? Or do they really just mean they care about making sure the people who aren't educating children don't lose their jobs? What policies do the Democratic party pursue that actually help black people--or any people? Explain just how creating dependency makes people stronger.

Maybe the "leadership" of the black community should be giving the Democratic party some tough scrutiny these days. After faithfully delivering better than 90% of the vote for decades, what have they got? They got a 40% share of the Democratic convention. So what? The candidate still doesn't have a plan to do anything but throw money into programs that have never worked in the first place.

And you know what's really insulting?

Here we have a major 527 of a major party basically assuming that YOU, the "black voter" in "YOUR neighborhood" aren't going to be affected by the president's plan for "America." You, black voter, are not part of the America of privilege. We know this, because we are Democrats, and we realize that all blacks are poor, ignorant, and live in bad neighborhoods. In fact, we ASSUME the neighborhood is bad because YOU live in it.

Think about it.

The Democrats are assuming that black voters, by DEFINITION, are excluded from the president's economic policies, even though there is no way that money can see your color. Democrats assume that black people are neither Dr. Cosby nor Dr. Dre. In fact, they have castigated Dr. Cosby for criticizing black parents who aren't teaching their children manners. Democrats don't bother with manners, because they think they might offend someone by demanding standards of civility and decorum. They think this because they don't live in black neighborhoods. Even if they live next door to black people, they don't think of them as (whisper) "black."

This is going to be brutal, but it's a truth the Democrats and those who vote for them need to face.

The Democratic party has a completely unhealthy preoccupation with race because it's run by white liberals who can't let go of their own 300-year (or more) history of racism. To this day, they can't see people as people. To this very minute, they can't stop categorizing everyone by skin color.

Oh, they don't wear sheets and burn crosses (but they have been known to both burn and wear flags, though not simultaneously). They don't put "whites only" signs on their fountains. Instead, they condescend to blacks by treating them as children, by assuming that they can't achieve on their own, and by setting them on a separate track than they themselves would follow.

Look at the speeches at the Democratic convention. How did the "son of a mill worker" get where he is today? (Where he is today, though he didn't mention it, is in the highest reaches of wealth in America, a perch to which he flew by destroying OB-GYN doctors as a trial lawyer.) How did any of them achieve? Why, the same way Republicans did, of course. They worked hard, did the right things, lived right, and kept going. All politicians did--and those who didn't learn quickly to align themselves with those who did or to find a small moment of deprivation in their lives from which to biographically recover.

What they never do is use the welfare system as a stepping stone to success. What we never hear is how a Democrat politician learned from her social worker how to become self-sufficient and get off welfare and start her own business. What the Democrats never trot out are people who have risen from the ashes of poverty on the winds of welfare. Even if they could find such people, they wouldn't showcase them because Democrats actually agree with Republicans that welfare is not something to be proud of.

Republicans see a successful welfare program as one that ends because all of its clients move into a higher economic bracket. Democrats see a successful welfare program as one that lives on forever, growing larger and larger, encompassing more and more people. Republicans create programs to help people grow out of welfare. Democrats write grants for programs to go out and find more people to put in the system.

What may be most insulting of all is the way the Democratic party uses, rather than welcomes, black people. A person who is black who votes is, to Democrats, a "black voter." A politician who is black is a "black politician." A civil rights activist who is black is a "black leader." A Republican who is black is an "Uncle Tom."

Democrats define race not only by skin color, but also by levels of agreement with the positions of the Democratic party. Just like in slavery times, the left labels people "good" or "bad" blacks based on their willingness to take direction. There are, in Democrat terms, "our" blacks, and "their" blacks--"their" blacks are inauthentic because they have failed to develop the proper opinions for black people--which are easily discerned from a careful study of great black leaders like Karl Marx, Mao Tse Tung, and William Jefferson Clinton.

So now the Media Fund wants to hammer home the point that President Bush isn't black. That's hardly a surprise. But the fact is that John Kerry isn't either, so if we follow the multicultural line of logic, Kerry cannot truly represent black people either. Is there something coming down the line that we aren't yet aware of? Do the hopelessly white Kerry and Edwards plan to put Al Sharpton and Carol Mosely Braun in the cabinet? From the way the commercials run, it sounds more like they want us to think they will put 50-cent and Nelly in there.

Don't get played by the Republicans?

At least Republicans play fair.