Liberals really are a single-minded lot: In their view, the only
possible explanation for a person hoping that Barack Obama loses
his next election is racism. All things political are analyzed
through a filter of skin color, putting today’s left directly at
odds with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that his children
“will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Conservatives might argue that leftists are hypocritical on this
score, that they are judging Obama by his skin color and judging
his critics by what they perceive to be the content of our
characters — based on nothing but our opposition to a far-left
president who happens to be black.
But what they are demonstrating is not hypocrisy, it is
projection. Liberals assume that since race is so important to
them, it must be equally important to the rest of us, that it must,
if you’ll pardon the pun, color our every political thought. This
is of course particularly true of the liberal elite who suffer
deeply from what Hayek termed the “fatal conceit,” a symptom of
which is believing that all intelligent people must think as
“Progressives” do — and that all people not intelligent enough to
think as they do are suited to be ruled by them.
The moral yardstick for the American left is now “the color of
your character.”
To liberals, when it comes to non-leftist critics of Barack
Obama, the fact that many of us are not black means little less
than that we wish the South had won the Civil War.
But when the subject is Barack Obama, the fact that his skin is
black (despite his mother having been white) trumps all; nothing
that our president does or says reflects any conceivable flaw in
character, intellect, wisdom, or even policy.
As most of President Obama’s fundraising seems to come from
Hollywood and Manhattan, two opinions from the former are
instructive as to liberal, and particularly black liberal,
thinking. In an interview with
Ebony magazine in February, actor Samuel L. Jackson
made clear the depth of his political analysis: “I voted for Barack
because he was black. Cuz that’s why other folks vote for other
people — because they look like them.” Project much, Samuel?
Apparently Mr. Jackson forgets that in the 2008 election, by
getting 43 percent of the white vote, Barack Obama did better among
whites than any Democrat had in more than three decades. Presumably
few of those roughly 30 million white voters who cast ballots for
Obama did it because they thought he looked a lot like them.
And on Thursday, actor Morgan Freeman — desperately seeking a
way to give race-centric liberals like Mr. Jackson a political
indulgence
in the unlikely event that reality inclines them against voting for
Obama again — told
NPR, after noting that “[Barack’s] mama… was [a] very white
American,” that Obama “[is] not America’s first black president —
he’s America’s first mixed-race president.” I suppose this means we
are allowed to consider half of his failures.
Who would have thought that melanin is to economic incompetence
what Teflon is to cooking incompetence — though only for
Democrats. Thus, the left explains black conservatives like
Congressman Allen West, Kevin Jackson, Larry Elder, Dr. Alveda C.
King, Star Parker, and Herman Cain as some combination of idiot,
sellout, and race-traitor. (Examples
here,
here,
here, and unfiltered, cask strength stuff in first comment
here.)
In other words, black Democrats are right because they are black
but black Republicans are wrong because they are Republican.
The left lives in an Orwellian world of racial Doublethink:
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete
truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold
simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be
contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against
logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe
that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian
of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then
to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed,
and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the
same process to the process itself. [George Orwell, 1984, Part 1,
Chapter 3.]
Although it is most obvious when liberals disparage conservative
blacks, their response to any criticism of the first black
president (apologies to Bill Clinton) makes plain that while there
are bad apples in all parts of society and politics, the Democratic
Party is the true home of racism in America — as it has been for
most of the years since the Ku Klux Klan was founded as the
earliest Democrat community organizers.
I was reminded of this in a more-personal-than-usual way several
days ago when during my
radio show, back-to-back liberal callers accused me of being
xenophobic and racist.
The theme of the show (not entirely coincidentally a few days
after the death of Rodney King) was “Can’t we all get along?” The
premise was that I, a non-religious libertarian Jew, had spent the
prior two days at the Western Conservative
Summit in a room full of 1,300 Christian conservatives and that
my takeaway from the event was “these are my friends.”
I pointed out that leftist groups will work with whomever they
have to in order to win, while our side, namely those with
generally pro-liberty, pro-free market policy preferences,
frequently lets disagreement on a minority of issues keep us from
working together.
A couple of times I used the phrase “losing our country.”
Apparently, that phrase is something of a radio roach motel if
you’re trying to catch a liberal.
The first liberal caller, Jack, opined that “your appeal to
people uniting because we’re losing our country is an appeal to
xenophobia, and it’s silly and alarmist.”
The comment took me aback, but it shouldn’t have. While I had
made passing comments about losing free speech rights due to fear
of insulting Islam, my thinking behind “losing our country” had
absolutely nothing to do with foreigners. (After all, many
immigrants probably love and understand America more than most
Democratic congressmen do.)
I explained as much to Jack — except for the bit about
Democrats — naively thinking that he simply misunderstood me. But
what had actually happened was that I misunderstood him. It wasn’t
that he listened to my words and interpreted them as xenophobic;
rather it was that he entered the conversation with his skin color
filter over his political vision.
And so, Jack continued: “I think that you’re aware that the
Republican Party is issuing appeals to people based on this idea
that, demographically, white Europeans are becoming a minority.
Their message is that…if you don’t vote for them, then you’re going
to be having all these brown people out there that are going to be
running things.”
I challenged Jack aggressively, and gave him my e-mail address
over the air, asking him to send me a link to any such ad. Of
course, none came from him or anyone else because this is, as I
said to Jack, “leftist propaganda trying to make Republicans look
like xenophobes.”
Jack’s call was disturbing. But as it turned out, Jack was only
the warm-up act for the very next caller, Ida — also, if I might
surmise based on voice, a middle-aged Caucasian.
According to Ida, or rather to things she recently read and,
like David St.
Hubbins, therefore believed, “Since Barack Obama became
president, there’s a 400 percent increase in assassination groups,
in assassination attempts. Another thing, no president has ever
been disrespected as much as Obama. And you know why that is?
Because he’s black. You may deny it up and down. In your heart, you
know it’s true.”
There was no point in discussing facts with Ida. Instead, I
reminded her that she doesn’t know me and has never met me. I
mentioned that I would have voted for Colin Powell, Condi Rice, or
J.C. Watts. I stated directly that “if there were a white president
who did all the same things that Barack Obama is doing, I would
dislike him and oppose him just as much, or perhaps even more
because… I am really proud that our country elected a black
president. I just wish it weren’t this one.”
But just as sunglasses block out certain wavelengths of light,
nothing I could say would get through Ida’s skin color filter. She
responded, “I really don’t care if Republicans are offended [by
accusations of racism] because it is the truth.”
Sadly for the United States, the oh-so-tolerant, diverse,
progressive left have turned Orwell’s dystopian predictions into
reality while keeping Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream a fantasy.
Honestly held differences be damned; it is the color of your
character that matters.
