Race

There are some very bad signs for the future of our polity in this election. The attempt to divide and conquer. to drive a wedge between the dependent-minded people and the creative, independent-minded people; the employee and the employer, black and white (remember Reverend Wright?) is coming strongly into the picture. As the Wall Street Journal editorialized here this morning, this needs to stop.

Yesterday the WSJ ran an article on the funding of Acorn, a "community organizing" organization which corrupts the ideals of social justice for poltical purposes to gain power and government grants. This amounts to voter registration for the Democrats, although by law they cannot specify a political party. Why President Bush stupidly signed this into law as part of the mortgage bailout I do not know. Here

To clarify, I do not agree with the ideals of social justice because it is a collectivist idea and attempts to redress what it sees as economic injustice, a reversal of the law of cause and effect. I do agree with them when their work is consistent with the application of individual rights.

ACORN although it justifies itself in terms of social justice it is not a legitimate expression of social justice. See the link above on the ideals of social justice to grasp what a person dedicated to these ideals got into when he worked with ACORN.

The gold standard for legitimate social justice looks like the movement Martin Luther King created to right the wrongs of Jim Crow. It wasn't funded by Washington. It was a man with a vision for all mankind who enrolled people to peacefully demonstrate such that the American people could see the racial injustice for themselves on their own TVs and be moved to purge racial injustice from the country's laws.

It is completely legal for a political party to register people to vote - on their own dime. It is obscene to steal people's money by law (if you don't think the gun is behind the law, try not paying your taxes) to fund this kind of campaign, a corruption of authentic principled justice based on every single person's right to HIS life.

If this isn't challenged in the Supreme Court, we've had it. When the "takers" outnumber the "makers" and vote your money into their pocket, dissolution is imminent. It violates the First Amendment which covers the freedom of political speech. And if the government expropriates your money, what resources do you have left to actively pursue this freedom? The Democratic Party is way over the top on this matter and those Congressmen, President Bush and all the agitators for this kind of action deserve to be publicly and vociferously sanctioned.

It cannot help the African-American who is going to be so crudely lumped by his skin color into a category that distinguishes nothing regarding his character or merit. See Racism. He will be used for greedy unscrupulous men's political power and he will end up paying a price that the honorable blacks do not deserve. So unjust. This breaks my heart - for them and for my country.

This appeared in National Review Online. Ward Connelly, an African-American, has been in the trenches fighting for the equality of all men under the law and has worked by any means he can find to get rid of quotas and preference based on race, ethnicity or any group privileges. He is hated by the victimologists of his race. Nevertheless, he's inspired by MLK's vision for mankind.

My Preferences
John McCain, Barack Obama, and civil rights today.

By Ward Connerly

One thing I have learned from more than 13 years of fighting for equal treatment for every American regardless of race, sex, color, or ethnicity is that politicians can triangulate more about this issue than almost any other — and get away with it. A few days ago, Sen. John McCain gave his support to our effort in Arizona to prohibit preferences through a constitutional amendment. In explaining his reason for doing so, McCain said, “I have always opposed quotas.” Instantly, Sen. Barack Obama pounced.

Speaking at a convention of “journalists of color” (the participants gave him standing ovations at the beginning and at the end of his appearance), Obama said, “I am disappointed that John McCain flipped and changed his position. I think in the past he had been opposed to these kinds of Ward Connerly referenda or initiatives as divisive. And I think he's right. You know, the truth of the matter is, these are not designed to solve a big problem, but they're all too often designed to drive a wedge between people.”

Having been thrust into a presidential campaign, it is appropriate for me to offer my thoughts.

Over the past ten years, no American president, Congress, legislature, or governor has acted to eliminate preferences — in other words, to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which commands the government to treat us all “without regard to race, color, national origin or sex.” In addition, the United States Supreme Court has handed down conflicting opinions about the matter.

In response, I have led the national effort to enforce the act through ballot initiatives in states that allow them. I find it interesting that the only people who consider such initiatives “divisive” are the ones who oppose them, such as Sen.Obama. Such people never seem to find preferences themselves “divisive.” Apparently, as long as those who are harmed by such policies — and those who believe preferences are fundamentally wrong — keep their mouths shut, sweet harmony will ring throughout the land.

Also, it seems that Obama is divided against himself on the issue. In his famed “race speech,” when he was trying to appeal to white Democrats to get the issue of Jeremiah Wright off his back, he acknowledged that affirmative action engenders resentment. Just a few days ago, Obama suggested he was ready to support class-based instead of race-based affirmative action: “I am a strong supporter of affirmative action when properly structured so that it is not just a quota, but it is acknowledging and taking into account some of the hardships and difficulties that communities of color may have experienced, continue to experience, and it also speaks to the value of diversity in all walks of American life. We are becoming a more diverse culture, and it's something that has to be acknowledged.”

I concur, but I might define “properly structured” differently than Obama does. What he fails to say is that it is not only “communities of color” that experience hardships and difficulties. Nor does he say how, as president, he can achieve his stated goal of uniting the American people while asking those not “of color” to look the other way when discriminated against.

If Obama is truly concerned about divisiveness, why didn’t he speak out when his foot soldiers at ACORN were taking pride in blocking our petition circulators from gathering signatures in Missouri? Their despicable tactics of harassment give new meaning to the term “divisive.”

It is true, by the way, that McCain has “flipped” about whether ballot initiatives are appropriate as a device for ending preferences. It is not true that he has “flipped” with regard to preferences themselves. He has consistently expressed disdain for preferential treatment based on race.

And even if he had changed his position substantively, he would be far from alone. Millions of Americans are at a different point in their thinking about race today than they were ten years ago, when McCain opposed legislation to place an initiative on the ballot to end preferences in Arizona. For this, Senator Obama should be thrilled. Without race “flippers,” he would not be the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party for president of the United States.

Until we reach the point that we are living out what Martin Luther King Jr. often called the “true meaning of our creed” that all men (and women) are created equal, how we deal with the issue of race will be a work in progress. Something tells me that, deep in his soul, Sen. Obama knows this. Certainly, he should.

— Ward Connerly is the author of Lessons from my Uncle James and a former regent of the University of California.

You can judge Barack Obama for yourself. I'm clear about my judgment of him.

Wall Street Got Drunk?

The hell they did. Bush's statement is absurd, not from the standpoint that Wall Street didn't run with the openings they saw because of Washington's regulation, but because he places the cause as Wall Street.

A legitimate authentic businessman doesn't get "drunk" about these matters and he does not allow himself to be thrown off track by eating the manna dropped from Washington.

Suppose I have decided to be a bank. I offer safe-keeping for people's money. In an unregulated market, the value I'm offering is safety and liquidity. People want to know that their money is secure from theft and they want to know that they can go get it when they need it.

The issue of lending money becomes a potential threat to those values unless I know what I am doing. Loans of all kinds have to be set up first with the depositors such that they are compensated for the risks they incur with their deposits that can be used for making loans. I, the banker in this case, have to know how much reserve I must have to protect the basic values I offer lest people come to the bank and find that they cannot get their money. If that happens, I'm bankrupt and my business is over.

The government has told the banks that they can lend more than they otherwise would and they have told them to loan to risky would-be borrowers. The government, they said, will ultimately back their depositors via the FDIC and other institutions. They have refocussed the concerns of the bank by removing the urgent reality of their accountability to their customers. The government will cover it.

The fact that the government isn't a bank dealing with people nor an insurance company who sets up reserves for the risks it takes is another story. The government is FORCE and has to take everything out of the hide of the population. It does it by taxation or inflation, i.e., the printing press.

All of the shenanigans of the banks and mortgage companies in the current fiasco result from the government's removing the principles of sound banking from the concern of the banks and mortgage companies. Hence a bubble which, when the piper plays his tune better known as when profligate ways hit the wall of reality, has to burst. Bush's fingerpointing is ludicrous and ignorant of what is going on. He should know better. Until we make sure the government stops inserting their FORCE via regulations into the situation this will not change.

The moral of this story? Force obviates the seeking of authentic values and the responsiblity for achieving those values.