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Buy the Book
Race Cards
Ann Coulter’s Mugged is a rarity — an honest book about race.
If you are sick and tired of seeing politicians and others playing the race card, or if you are just disgusted with the grossly dishonest way racial issues in general are portrayed, then you should get a copy of Ann Coulter’s new book, Mugged. Its subtitle is: “Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama.”
Few things are as rare as an honest book about race. This is one of the very few, and one of the very best.
Many people will learn for the first time from Ann Coulter’s book how a drunken hoodlum and ex-convict, who tried to attack the police, was turned into a victim and a martyr by the media, simply by editing a videotape and broadcasting that edited version, over and over, across the nation.
They will learn how a jury — which saw the whole unedited videotape and acquitted the police officers of wrongdoing — was portrayed as racist, setting off riots that killed innocent people who had nothing to do with the Rodney King episode.
Meanwhile, the people whose slick editing set off this chain of events received a Pulitzer Prize.
Even the Republican President of the United States, George H.W. Bush, expressed surprise at the jury’s verdict, after seeing the edited videotape, while the jury saw the whole unedited videotape. Even Presidents should keep their mouths shut when they don’t know all the facts. Perhaps especially Presidents.
Innumerable other examples of racial events and issues that have been twisted and distorted beyond recognition are untangled and revealed for the frauds that they are in Mugged.
The whole history of the role of the Democrats and the Republicans in black civil rights issues is taken apart and examined, showing with documented fact after documented fact how the truth turns out repeatedly to be the opposite of what has been portrayed in most of the media.
It has long been a matter of official record that a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats, in both Houses of Congress, voted for the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s. Yet the great legend has come down to us that Democrats created the civil rights revolution, over the opposition of the Republicans.
Since this all happened nearly half a century ago, even many Republicans today seem unaware of the facts, and are defensive about their party’s role on racial issues, while Democrats boldly wrap themselves in the mantle of blacks’ only friends and defenders.
To puff up their role as defenders of blacks, it has been necessary for Democrats and their media supporters to hype the dangers of “racists.” This has led to some very creative ways of defining and portraying people as “racists.” Ann Coulter has a whole chapter titled “You Racist!” with examples of how extreme and absurd this organized name-calling can become.
No book about race would be complete without an examination of the role of character assassination in racial politics. One of the classic injustices revealed by Ann Coulter’s book is the case of Charles Pickering, a white Republican in Mississippi, who prosecuted the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s.
Back in those days, opposing the Ku Klux Klan meant putting your life, and the lives of your family members, at risk. The FBI had to guard Pickering and his family. Later, Pickering went on to become a federal judge and, in 2001, President George W. Bush nominated him for promotion to the Circuit Court of Appeals.
As a Republican judge, Pickering was opposed by elite liberal Democrats in Congress and in the media who, in Ann Coulter’s words, “sent their children to 99-percent white private schools” while “Pickering sent his kids to overwhelmingly black Mississippi public schools.”
Among the charges against Pickering was that he was bad on civil rights issues. Older black leaders in Mississippi, who had known Pickering for years, sprang to his defense. But who cared what they said? Pickering’s nomination was defeated on a smear.
Mugged is more than an informative book. It is a whole education about the difference between rhetoric and reality when it comes to racial issues. It is a much needed, and even urgently needed education, with a national election just weeks away.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
About the Author
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (15) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Thomas Sowell
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http://spectator.org/archives/2012/10/10/race-cards
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Aristocat| 10.10.12 @ 7:39AM
Ann Coulter is awesome..
Von Mises Jr| 10.10.12 @ 8:18AM
And also is Dr. Thomas Sowell awesome.....
Both are brilliant and courageous. And if we want to take our country and Constitution back from the socialist, we should not only praise them, but imitate them.
TLP| 10.10.12 @ 3:36PM
Obviously, Dr. King died for Nothing.
JmsA| 10.11.12 @ 12:05AM
Yes, she is, as is also Dr. Sowell in defending liberty and allowing the truth be heard.
Seapuss| 10.10.12 @ 8:33AM
Like Ann says, Democrats have always had a problem with the concept of a colorblind society. They have been obsessed with race for their entire history. Before the 1960s, Democrats refused to treat blacks as human beings. Since the 1960s, Democrats have refused to treat blacks as adults.
The Avenger| 10.10.12 @ 9:31AM
Brilliant analysis, however the "black leaders" have allowed this to continue for way too long. Where are the leaders who will stand up to the democratic party? In a short period of 50 years the democrats have destroyed the black man in this country. He has went from one who longs for equality to one who wants his Obama phone. It is truly shocking that blacks vote overwhelmingly for the party who keep them on the government "plantation".
scotchieguy| 10.10.12 @ 11:32AM
That is the part that just amazes me, that they would actually vote
for the party which promises them the most crumbs, but then again,
blacks in America today are probably the most brainwashed people in
history. They still think the Man wants to keep them down.
PolishKnight| 10.10.12 @ 12:25PM
Unlike most liberals, I live among many different people from different backgrounds and hear them speak honestly after a beer or two. One guy I worked with (he was my supervisor) and black told me that he pulled the race card after he was stopped for speeding and implied to the officer that he was being racially profiled and had a lawyer and got let go. It was clear that he knew he was speeding and got away with it.
Other times, I have seen blacks bother people and act rudely ready to pull out the race card if someone asks them to turn their radio down or stop bothering a woman wanting to be left alone, etc. They have a word for "white privilege" but what word is there for this kind of behavior?
Leftists themselves like to joke that most conservatives are "trailer park trash" and uneducated hillbillies but if that's the case, then how are they "privileged" and should be discriminated against in lieu of upper and middle class minorities? It's a little game they've been playing and even the Avenger may have bought into their posturing. They know the score because if they didn't, and people who truly believe they are being oppressed, don't snap at a the slightest perceived gripe or insult. They keep their head down.
TLP| 10.10.12 @ 3:41PM
Think: Pavlov's Dog.
Period.
spike59| 10.11.12 @ 5:54AM
'Brilliant analysis, however the "black leaders" have allowed this to continue for way too long. Where are the leaders who will stand up to the democratic party?'
---------------------------------------
THIS is what we have for "black leaders" these days on the Left:
"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. "
"I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.
My experience is that people who call themselves "The Intellectuals" understand theories, but they do not understand things." situation"
Booker T Washington
spike59| 10.11.12 @ 5:55AM
"situation" should not have been in there-forgot to 'preview'...
scubadude| 10.10.12 @ 12:22PM
I'm an old beat-up white guy who spent considerable time in Miss. in the 60's and experienced a lot of the racial problems that existed at that time but what I want to talk about is an experience I recently had at a VA hospital.
I encountered a black vet who just went completely ballistic over the racist white Republicans and Romney (we weren't even discussing politics). I talked about Lincoln, Eisenhower forcing school integration, KKK being mainly southern Democrats, the civil rights legislation being opposed by Dems, the segregationists in the south being Dems, ax handles (Dems) and he called me a liar. Nothing I said could change his mind. He had a fistful of propaganda from somewhere that he kept shaking in my face and nothing I said even made a dent in his thinking. It's a shame, so many peoples life experiences wasted because of lies from the left!
Jane Chingo| 10.10.12 @ 4:34PM
I don't doubt her facts, but her books always leave me feeling unclean. And why the unprovoked attack on the Celts? Civil rights aren't based on sociopolitical status or origins.
theyjustcantstop| 10.10.12 @ 9:56PM
thank-you thomas sowell,for the article.
Brian Richard Allen | 10.11.12 @ 1:10PM
God bless you, Doctor Sowell. Knowing you are up the road makes me more proud than ever to be an (immigrant and therefore hyphenated) AMERICAN-American! And God bless Ms Coulter -- and thank you both for your lives.
Brian Richard Allen:.
Los Angeles - CA 90028
And the Very Far Abroad