In February 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder said America is a “nation of cowards” on race because we don’t talk about. So let’s talk about it.
Voter ID
Progressives are up in arms over the prospect of voters being required to show something at the polls they must show regularly to function as a productive member of society – a photo ID. It’s because progressives, particularly progressive Democrats, have a vested interest in preventing as many people as possible, especially minorities, from becoming productive members of society.
Productive members of society – and those who aspire to be – don’t need or want government to do for them what they can do for themselves. The socialists, communists, fascists and anarchists – in other words, progressives – obviously don’t have the support to win elections. They must find many votes beyond their core supporters to survive. So they attempt to manipulate minorities.
They play the race card. They attempt to convince them Republicans, particularly conservatives, are racists.
Never mind only a few generations ago, it was Democrats who were lynching black people in the South, turning water cannons on them, toying with the idea of using eugenics to eliminate them and, always, trying to prevent them from voting. Since the party of slavery couldn’t own the bodies of black people anymore, it turned to trying to own their minds.
And votes. In the last 50 years, progressives have become quite interested in minority votes as the popularity of their message has waned. They pushed for a web of government dependence to entangle minorities – direct subsidies of just enough money to encourage complacency, public housing that serves as a staging ground for continuing criminal enterprises, an education system that coddles and babysits but does not, no matter how much money is sunk into it, educate, and, from their leaders, the soul-crushing rhetoric of victimhood and entitlement. Utopia is only an election cycle away – if we can get rid of those damn Republicans.
How else to explain how U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has been in office since 1965? It certainly isn’t because he has helped his district in Detroit. It looks like a nuclear bomb went off … twice. You can tell what it used to be when you drive through, and it’s sad. There is no one in that district not named Conyers whose life is better off since he assumed office, yet he’s re-elected by overwhelming margins every two years. Why?
They vote Democrat because they are told Republicans will only make things worse. Never told – or asked – is how things truly could be worse. But it’s folly to seek logic in irrational thought.
Which brings us back to voter ID laws.
Holder told a group of black preachers this week the push in some states to require a government-issued ID to vote constituted an assault on minority voting rights. He seemed unconcerned about protecting the integrity of that right.
Holder claims requiring a photo ID to vote would disenfranchise minorities disproportionately…somehow. MSNBC harps on this point relentlessly, and progressives from Rev. Al Sharpton to U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., equate voter ID laws with a return to Jim Crow. But why? Do these progressives fear their partners in democracy are too stupid to obtain a driver’s license or state-issued photo ID?
The sad part is the rhetoric surrounding this issue figures only to get worse.
Get real, progressives. Almost everyone has a photo ID these days. You have to have one to deal with
banks, stores, school registrars, property managers, traffic cops and with the HR people where you work.
Progressives should be encouraging minorities to get IDs, not concocting excuses so they don’t have to. A few years ago, they demanded illegal aliens have access to drivers’ licenses. Was that Jim Crow? Only if you want to keep those people lashed to the ship of government dependency.
There’s no upward mobility in that plan. You can’t even move across the street. You’re just stuck where you are, where your parents were, where your children will be. But you’ll keep voting for Democrats because there will always be “leaders” who you view as having the job of helping you telling you the alternative is worse.
Democrats know upward mobility is not their friend. Even the prospect of it threatens their power structure. That’s why they don’t want you having a photo ID. It’s crucial to helping you improve your life on your own. And if you can improve your life on your own, you don’t need them or anything they’re selling.
If vote fraud is such an insignificant thing – as progressives falsely claim – then why not root it out completely? Because the party that always seems to ensure the polls in St. Louis stay open just long enough to get right amount of votes to pull out close elections at the 11th hour, or miraculously finds forgotten “lost” votes in car trunks or offices after the number needed to win is known has no interest ensure the integrity of our “sacred” right to vote. They need Mickey Mouse and the offensive line of the Dallas Cowboys on the rolls in every jurisdiction.
Because they want to win. And they’re willing to do anything to win.
They will cheat the process they hold so dear. They will oppress the people they claim to champion. They will spend $10 trillion on the war on poverty and make not a dent in the poverty rate.
Because it’s not the defeat of poverty they seek. It’s political power. Their ideas won’t win elections, so their bought votes must.
Progressives Can’t Help Themselves
This Holy Grail of race-baiting politics causes discussions of politics to veer from constructive to avoidance. I got into a discussion on Twitter this week with MSNBC contributor and professor Karen Hunter (no relation, but her first reply jokingly told me I needed to change my last name) about her comment that Mitt Romney wants to be “president of Caucasiastan.”
I know the folly of engaging with someone whose first move is the race card, but I proceeded anyway.
After she acknowledged Rev. King’s dream was everyone being treated equally, she claimed to be the culmination of that dream, adding “which is why I know that Mitt’s vision of America is a nightmare for folks of color.” She didn’t explain why.
Karen also wondered whether I think “Romney cares about or even understands the needs of black/brown Americans?” Telling that Karen Hunter thinks “black/brown Americans” have special needs and need special attention, that certain Americans can’t thrive on their own, that they need the government that has served them so well these many years.
In just a few tweets, Hunter played every stereotypical card of a progressive. When she ran out, she ran out (she blocked me for pointing out that a terrible economy knows no race). But not before firing off the ever-thoughtful “Mitt just wants to be POTUS. He doesn’t actually care @ the people. We have more problems than the economy.”
Yes, we do – starting with progressives who embrace and foster division, envy and hatred. They push ideas that have failed everywhere because they believe those ideas failed only because they weren’t the ones implementing them.
But most of all they embrace race.
A progressive will look at someone, assess the amount of pigment in their skin and determine how that person should think and vote. Hell hath no fury like that of progressives when someone of color who dares stray from their pigmentally assigned expectations. Just ask Clarence Thomas.
The Way Out Is Up
Progressives talk about “social justice” and “leveling the playing field” – deep-sounding but meaningless platitudes meant only to distract. But they won’t acknowledge the fact their policies, their actions, are what caused the playing field to look like Dresden in the first place.
They ignore the starting line, where everyone is equal, and fixate on the finish line, when there isn’t one. It’s exactly what you’d do if you trying to make sure no one wins and convince people the deck is stacked against them.
That’s because what progressives want is power – government power, their power – and they have no problem using race baiting to steer votes their way.
Even if voter fraud were as rare as progressives claim, the real fraud is when they tell large chunks of the population their destiny is determined by their skin tone. A photo ID won’t set anyone free, but it is a passport to a society that values work, rewards diligence and offers an upward path. Progressives can’t have that because those who choose that path are significantly less likely to vote progressive.
Karen Hunter ended the last tweet listed above with the hashtag “#racematters.” She’s right, it does. To racists. That explains why it’s the obsession of progressives.
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