James Taranto has a great post on Democrat racial politics and the ugliness it is bringing to our nation. Of course, Democrats have always done racial politics-- sowing racial division is simply what it means to be a Democrat politician.
"Colorblind" is the one value Democrats have never embraced and will never embrace.
Glenn Reynolds understands:
The Democrats gave us Jim Crow. Demonization and division are what they know. It’s easier to change the objects than to change the strategy.
Why should Democrats change the strategy? Race-baiting works. Slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, Segregation, lynching, affirmative action, race-baiting. On and on. Only the favored and disfavored races change. Racial division and race-baiting have worked well for them for 200 years.
Still does. And with the economy in long-term shambles and government dependency (and the increase in government power inherent to dependency) exploding, race-baiting politics makes it a trifecta of Democrat demagoguery.
It has been said that the Republicans are the stupid party. In many ways they are stupid politically, or at least they are unwilling to push the racial and class divisiveness and dependency-enslavement of voting blocks that is needed to play the Democrat game. Republicans aren't willing to divide us and to destroy Americans' self-sufficiency to get their votes.
Some Republicans really do believe in small(er) government, free(er) enterprise, and a color-blind society. Not all or even many, but some. No Democrat believes in any of those things.
It's why I'm a Republican. Repubs have a lot of faults, but they stop short of the abject demagoguery-- and the shamelessness-- of the Democrat party.
Well, of course the Republicans are colour blind. If you're rich, regardless of your skin colour, they want you to keep your tax cuts. If you're poor, regardless of your skin colour, they want you to do your bit and forgo whatever federal benefits you might be getting.
ReplyDeleteIn the present economy, cutting benefits and retaining tax cuts to the rich is the last thing any sensible person would want to do. David Cameron attempted to do that in Britain in 2010, and the British economy is still about 2% smaller than it was before the GFC. Obama attempted to do the reverse, and at least the American economy is about 3% higher than before the GFC.
Benefits paid to the less well off get spent, stimulating the economy and bringing in more federal revenue. Tax cuts to the rich tend to be saved or spent overseas, doing little for the economy and bringing in little new federal revenue. One reduces the federal deficit. The other increases it.
Actually, it was the conservative hero, Ronald Reagan, who started the downward spiral of out of control federal spending (mainly on the military) and cutting federal revenue.
Obama just had the misfortune of succeeding George W Bush, who arguably is the worst American president of all time. Although Obama, in many ways, is also a disappointment.
Actually Johann, if you knew what you were talking about, you would know that the tax deal Reagan cut with the Democrats included $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax cuts. Reagan later lamented that “Congress never cut spending by even one penny.”
DeleteOf course, he probably expected that Democrats weren't lying through their teeth when they cut the deal. That was a pretty foolish expectation, since their lips were moving.
And, as usual, the current predicament is "Bush's fault". Rarely in my long life have I witnessed such a candid and widely-held admission of the ineffectual efforts* of a Progressive hero (i.e., President Lightworker) to overcome the apparently awesome power of his predecessor. Why, it was only a day or so ago that the President was chiding the Congress for not extending the Bush Tax Cuts. Amazing, eh?
*Unless you count the 2010 Summer of Recovery.
-KW Anonymous, ninja love god, is an expert on hiding behind a veil and making inane comments.
ReplyDeleteIf Freud were alive today, he'd say it all started with Mommy's skirts.
@KW:
ReplyDeleteShould the law be color-blind?
And if you knew what you were talking about, you would know that Reagan asked Congress for more total spending than it passed into law.
ReplyDeleteBoo
So that is why the Democrats were caterwauling about Reagan's "draconian cuts" and the "plight of the homeless"?
DeleteBecause he was spending too much?
@Mregnor
ReplyDeleteShould the law ignore the ongoing effects of hundreds of years of slavery and Jim Crow?
Boo
The entire notion that it’s really the Democrats that are racist is racist itself, because it relies on the premise that blacks, who overwhelmingly support Democrats, are too stupid to realize that they are being manipulated en masse.
ReplyDelete-KW
The notion that it's really the Democrats that are racist is racist is itself racist.
DeleteIt presumes that Democrats, who are overwhelmingly supported by blacks, are incapable of racism, which is a racist presumption.
Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have both been actual candidates for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. Would you call them racists?
Oh, and Should the law be color-blind?
The notion that blacks, who overwhelmingly support Democrats, are too stupid to recognize which party is more racist is itself racist.
DeleteBoo
@Boo:
Delete"Racist" does not only mean "hating blacks".
It means judging and treating people differently based on race.
Which, of course, is a synopsis of the Democratic Party Platform.
Racism is the belief that race accounts for differences in human character and abilities, and that some races are superior to others. The prejudice and discrimination that arises from that belief are what race based laws address. A law isn’t necessarily unfair because it treats races differently, especially when the law itself is meant to address the prejudice and discrimination that arise from racism.
DeleteWalking into a job under the added scrutiny that comes with low expectations based on race is unfair. Having to carry that burden every day of your life is unfair. Knowing that a white guy in a group of blacks is far more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt is unfair. Begging that the dynamics of race relations in America should be ignored in order to maintain white privilege is racist.
-KW
[A law isn’t necessarily unfair because it treats races differently, especially when the law itself is meant to address the prejudice and discrimination that arise from racism.]
DeleteA law that treats races differently is itself racist, and in many ways is worse than cultural racism. The Constitution guarantees equal protection of the law, which obviously prohibits unequal application of the law based on race.
Your endorsement of race-based law is breath-taking. It assumes collective guilt-- that it is ethical to legally disfavor people of one race even though those individuals have never been convicted in court of any crime. And the beneficiaries of race-based law may have actually suffered no harm from racism-- imagine the children of rich black entertainers who may have become rich in part because of their race, or imagine new black immigrants to the US, who have never personally suffered from racism in the US because they haven't been in the US.
Your advocacy of race-based law is no different in concept from segregation or the Nazi race laws. Group guilt, group privilege. Same shit. You are a fu*king Democrat. Same race-baiting sh*t.
The Constitution guarantees equal protection of the law, which obviously prohibits unequal application of the law based on race.
DeleteNo, it is not. The Constitution guarantees equal protection, not equal laws. If society is systemically biased against one or another group, then equal protection mandates that the law be biased in their favor to account for that fact.
But since you have the legal acumen of a third grader, you probably won't understand this.
[When you can make a compelling argument that society is color-blind, then I’ll be willing to entertain making laws color-blind. Of course when society does become color-blind then these laws won’t need to be repealed because they will have become totally irrelevant, and the only reason to want them gone would be to re-introduce discrimination.]
ReplyDeleteSociety will never be colorblind, because society is people, and people are not perfect. But law should be colorblind, and support for laws that favor certain races is racist.
Because society is unfair, should laws be unfair?
If society is systematically unfair, I have no problem addressing the unfairness by law.
ReplyDelete-KW
So laws should be unfair, in reverse image to societal unfairness, to even things up?
ReplyDeleteIf blacks are wrongly convicted at a rate higher than whites (probably true), should the law require an increase in wrongful convictions of whites, to even things up?
Could you point to the Constitutional basis for your "lets make laws unfair because society is unfair" principle?
If blacks are wrongly convicted at a rate higher than whites (probably true), should the court require an increase in government spending in order to revamp the system to ensure this does not happen in the future?
ReplyDeleteBoo
@Boo:
ReplyDeleteYes, emphatically.
Injustice in our justice system, especially if it is systematic, is an atrocity, and I have long believed that we are much too lenient with prosecutorial misconduct, which is more common than is generally acknowledged. Each case of wrongful conviction should be investigated relentlessly, like an airline crash, because it is the failure of an entire system.
But "switching the races" and wrongfully convicting innocent people of other races, which is what you do with affirmative action, is not the answer. It is, in fact, the same thing.