Jim Crow Liberalism
Having lost both houses of Congress and the White House in two straight elections, Republicans are going through an identity crisis, its leaders holding town hall meetings to "listen" to the people.
"What should we focus on? Should we drop the social issues? How do we get the young people back?"
Such angst and soul-searching is not the mark of the leader, but the mark of a man suffering from doubt and despair.
Why is the party in trouble? Simple. Dubya got a hold of the keys, got high on neocon hooch, and crashed and rolled the family SUV.
He launched an unnecessary war against a country that had not attacked us. With his utopian No Child Left Behind scheme and his Medicare drug plan, he did his passable imitation of LBJ, and blew a hole in the budget.
Touting globalism, he presided over the loss of one in every four U.S. manufacturing jobs and ran up $5 trillion in trade deficits. He refused to defend the Mexican border against an invasion, then pushed an amnesty for the invaders.
This was no Reaganite. This was the neocons' apprentice.
How does the party reconnect with Middle America? How does it win back the Reagan Democrats who went home disgusted?
Become again the party of Frank Ricci.
And who is Frank Ricci?
He is a fireman in New Haven, Conn., with 11 years in the department, who suffers from dyslexia, but nonetheless has pursued his dream of becoming a lieutenant and a captain.
Six months before the promotion test, Ricci quit his second job. He bought $1,000 worth of the textbooks he was told to study, had a friend read them onto tapes to compensate for his dyslexia, studied every spare hour he got, and sat for the test, to compete for one of eight lieutenant slots open.
Frank made it. Frank Ricci came in sixth.
It was after the results of the test were made known that the problems arose. For, of the officers who had made the cut, all were white, except for one Latino.
Concluding the test results would, if used by the department, have an "adverse impact" on the black community, New Haven tossed out the results and called for new exams to ensure a "fair" outcome.
Thus, because he is a white man whose people came from Italy, Frank Ricci is to be denied a promotion he worked for and won, and be robbed of his American dream by the liberal bigots who run New Haven.
Had Frank Ricci and half of the other top performers been black, all would be on their way to becoming lieutenants and captains.
What is being done to Frank Ricci is exactly what was done to black folks for decades. Great black ballplayers who might have become legends like DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig never got the chance because they were black. Black students were denied admission to prep schools, colleges and military academies because of their color.
Now, what was done to them is being done to white folks. And it is just as wrong as it was then.
In 21st century America, race discrimination endures.
All we have done is switch the color of the victims with the color of the beneficiaries. Today it is white males applying for jobs and promotions as cops, firemen, government workers, who are held back because their color does not comport with the desired "diversity."
What New Haven has done to Frank Ricci is like the U.S. Olympic Committee throwing out all the trial heat results in the 100- and 200-meter races because not a single white runner qualified.
New Haven contends the "disparate impact" of the test hurts the black community, proving discrimination. But does the relative absence of blacks in the National Hockey League prove discrimination?
If the Republican Party wants a future, it will become again the party that stands on the principle that "No discrimination means no discrimination," that stands with the victims of state bigotry, and that stands up to hypocrites like the Jim Crow liberals of New Haven.
Affirmative action began as a mandate to cast a wider net and ensure all had an equal shot. It has become a mighty engine of state injustice that seeks to remedy the consequences of past racial sins and crimes, by committing new ones.
In Michigan, Washington and California, none of them red states, majorities have voted to abolish affirmative action. Only Colorado failed in a dead heat last fall. A Republican drive to write into federal law an end to all race and gender preferences, as well as to all race and gender discrimination, is a cause whose time has come.
This is a winning issue for the GOP, for it is rooted in principle and comports with what is written on the human heart. Down deep, even liberals know that what is being done to Frank Ricci is not right.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Entries(RSS)
Pat remains the best rhetorician of our time. Only he could summarize the past 8 years in Hell in a sentence: "Dubya got a hold of the keys, got high on neocon hooch, and crashed and rolled the family SUV."
In the above sentence, Pat also implies: a) Bush's drinking problem; b) the delerium that gripped America following 9/11; c) the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler, and the near bankruptcy of Ford; d) the replacement of SUVs -- that is, real vehicles for real American families -- with green Yugos in Government Motors, cars fit only for metrosexuals.
No other writer today can imply so much in so few words. He's a political Shakespeare.
Mr. Seiler,
You are on target. As our country heads deeper in the morass, at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that I did all I could to help Buchanan become president.
The Republican party will never become the party of Frank Ricci because (1) they really don't give a hoot about working men and women; (2) they are too scared to be considered racist to defend a white man even if he is in the right (look at the brouhaha over Trent Lott's remarks about Strom Thurmond); (3) they are too locked into free trade, globalism and all the rest to defend the localism and regionalism necessary to protect people like Frank Ricci.
To repeat my comment to a previous, recent Buchanan column re the future of the GOP: Who cares?!!! Why discuss the future prospects of a rotting corpse?
#5: Mark, because until it is buried it stinks.
Gerald Celente sees in the historic trends now unfolding that the American people will abandon the two stinking corposes called the Democratic and Republican Parties and form a "third" party that will take power. Personally, the whole system needs to be renovated, not just parties -- and that means the conversion of human souls. Until then, its just a serial playing ad infinitum et ad nauseum to the material benefit of the few.
@7: "...the American people will abandon the two stinking corposes (sic) called the Democratic and Republican Parties and form a 'third' party that will take power."
Unofficially, this has already happened, Meng. It's known, variously, as the Demican, Republicrat or just plain Incumbent Party. The American people have the government they deserve, composed (decomposed?) of the party they chose.
Hey, Mark, that's what Gerald Celente forecasted. Did you read my own thoughts about the system?
Great minds...
@7 J Meng
Perhaps it's the very nature of parties that's become the problem. If individuals ran to represent their constituents on the grounds that he'd fight to protect the voters from federal bullying, he'd be re-elected til the cows come home.
@11, Mr. Gervaise: men constitute political parties. If men are corrupt or ideologically unsound, then parties are corrupt and/or unsound. My argument is this: if men represented the interests of the law (based on the divine law), then their districts or states as well as their nation would prosper. For this to happen, men must be within the law. If this were to happen, then metaphysically speaking, there would be no need for parties, because there would be a common goal that all adhered to. But this is theory.
"Republicans leaders are holding town hall meetings to “listen” to the people.
“What should we focus on? Should we drop the social issues? How do we get the young people back?”
Such angst and soul-searching is not the mark of the leader, but the mark of a man suffering from doubt and despair.
Why is the party in trouble? Simple. Dubya got a hold of the keys, got high on neocon hooch, and crashed and rolled the family SUV"
This is Pat Buchanan in full dress uniform with medals, not ribbons, telling it just like the old war horse sees it after the smoking lamp is lit. Like Mr. Piatak, this is the man I was honored to help when he ran against his own feeble party wizards and had them on the run until the old oligarchs rallied behind Forbes' and Bob Dole by covering their expenses while Pat, his campaign flat broke, took to enjoying himself posing with real, gun toting Americans in Tombstone, Arizona. I wish Pat all the best, he has earned the right to say whatever he wants about either party in my humble opinion.
Meng,
Trouble is how are those human souls going to be renewed? Christianity is by far the best bet, but let's face it, it has been so thoroughly compromised by red infiltration and dispensationalist stupidity, along with generations saturated with materialism, it will take a miracle bigger than the parting of the Red Sea to get it back to it's true self. With the Church itself backing Zionism, which in reality wants to kill of Christianity you might as well say game over. The Church has tied its own noose, and the Zionists have put it around the Church's neck, ready to pull the lever!!!!
Political parties to be successful, need to be very rigid, very disciplined, very well organized, etc. None of the third parties in existence today have any of these attributes. THE LP is a total mess, really not a political party at all. The Constitution Party is very good, but very small, considered a Christian Party, and very de centralized. Some state branches go by other names, so unity is not so great. In fact, the CA party ran Keyes instead of Baldwin. The Greens are not well organized as a national party either, and like the LP have folks that disagree on a lot of issues thus the party is always split with dissention.
@14, Robert Bruce: are you referring to my number 7? Of course, the solution to man's dilemma is Christianiy, Catholic Christianity.
@15, Robert Bruce: Political parties are made up of men. Yet, if men are virtuous and are possessed of common goals, political parties are futile. Damn the Republicans and damn the Democrats.
@12 Mr. Meng
While politics is Satan's game, we nevertheless live in a representative republic. My take on the parties is that the dominant one "controls congress," which enables whips and leaders to assign committee memberships. But each issue presented for deliberation requires a yes or no vote, with cowards voting present.
The problem with congress these days is that each bill can be hundreds of pages long leaving the representatives no time to read them. In theory all congressmen should vote no if they have not read the bills. But they are sheep, like the idiots who put them in office.
In a nutshell I'm in favor of regionalism.
@14 Robert
What's more, the "evangelicals" have taken a stance where Israel is the apple of God's eye, and can therefore do no wrong -- no matter how grievous the sin. They refuse to take a stand about cultural pollution caused by Jews running the gambling and pornography businesses, and these Christians are terrified to mention the financial swindles and destructive political activism of groups like the Gay Lobbies, the ACLU, ADL, and SPLC. One negative word will bring out the smear bund in force. Look what happened to that Jesse Jackson fellow.
"If the Republican Party wants a future, it will become again the party that stands on the principle that “No discrimination means no discrimination,”"
Become again? How about "decide to become"? That's a little more accurate. I've never understood how the descendant of Confederate soldiers can lay a wreath at a monument in Richmond in honor of his ancestors, then go to his computer and compose strategies for the political party which overthrew the Consitution in order to wage war against his ancestors and to impose a military occupation of the Southern states for 12 years thereafter.
Mr. Buchanan, wake up. The GOP has never been a party of Constitutionalists. The GOP is the original socialist party in the US, and has been behind every assault on the Constitution since they formed themselves in New England and Illinois.