A Helpful Article

I've never heard this allegedly Southern expression, "acting brand new." I can't vouch for anyone ever having said that. However, I find this article very helpful.
He's spoken off the cuff about race relations on a widely circulated podcast (even using the n-word) and then eloquently followed that with what can only be described as a sermon on race relations in America before breaking into song. He's challenged America to go deeper in its support of equality than retiring symbols of slavery (such as the Confederate flag) and impolitic words (such as the n-word).

While eulogizing a slain minister and state lawmaker allegedly killed by a white supremacist in Charleston, S.C., he outlined a whole raft of ways in which discrimination remains and inequality continues to grow. And now, in the span of two weeks, he has announced two major reform packages — housing last week and criminal justice on Tuesday — that could, if ultimately implemented, be of particular benefit to people of color in the United States.

Here's the thing: This Obama might look or sound "brand new" to some Americans. He might even sound a little something like the black president some white Americans across the political spectrum feared (or hoped for).
We've been strongly critical of the President and his administration on very many points. None of these, however, have come up as criticisms of him. In fact, in general we've supported all of these things -- prison reform, courtesy, with some regret the retirement of the Confederate flag from the war memorial at the South Carolina statehouse as a show of support for black Americans. Housing is the only one in which I suspect there's any strong disagreement lurking, and that simply because the most of you are pretty opposed to government interference in markets of any sort.

She goes on to point out that he spoke to the NAACP. Well, of course he did. The NAACP's call this week to sand blast the monument off Stone Mountain ought to be opposed for the same reason we oppose ISIS or the Taliban when they destroy artistic symbols of the world before Islam. But I don't think the NAACP is a "hate group" because of it. (Oddly enough, that's the kind of rhetoric long-time NAACP-supporter the Southern Poverty Law Center uses.) We understand there's a painful history, and oppose the rhetoric and the idea without thinking they are haters for expressing their anger and bitterness.

The differences ultimately aren't about race. They're about America, about liberty, about sovereignty, about the Constitution and about duty. Those are the things that divide us from this President. The things he does that point to race are the main things that don't bother us.

4 comments:

Cass said...

Housing is the only one in which I suspect there's any strong disagreement lurking, and that simply because the most of you are pretty opposed to government interference in markets of any sort.

Not in my case. I totally support *some* regulation of markets just as I support *some* regulation of any endeavor by which people violate other people's property or other rights. I don't see markets as some magical realm of human interaction, to which the baser aspects of human nature do not apply. Therefore, sensible regulation is necessary to provide legal recourse and create a stable system in which people can be reasonably confidence they can trade to their mutual profit.

I doubt too many conservatives or even libertarians support NO regulation of markets. Again, it's not a binary but a broad spectrum.

I oppose Obama's housing nonsense because it will infringe on property rights and the right of free association. And because that jerk has no "right" to tell me I need to live the way he wants me to. If I can earn enough money to raise my family in a safe neighborhood with good schools, I think I should be able to spend my money as I wish to. Yanno... what this fellow says :p

It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our sentiments, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things. Law, because it has force for its necessary sanction, can only have the domain of force, which is justice.

There's no "right to live in that neighborhood over there, and if I can't afford to live there then taxpayers need to subsidize my beautiful and natural right to live wherever I want". Nor is there a "right to live in a racially diverse community".

Why, O why can't these liberals stop forcing their values onto others?

MikeD said...

Because ultimately, that's what socialism is all about. That everyone lives under the rules set forth by the State (and under the benevolent people that decide what those rules are... but never mind that... we're all equal in socialism). And the specific problem is that they cannot get people to just do things the way they want them done by convincing others of the rightness of their way of thinking, so there needs to be laws passed to make people do what they want.

And I can't honestly say that impulse doesn't exist on the Right, either. Because there's the old saw about a Conservative being afraid that someone out there somewhere might be having fun. Frankly, right now at this point in history, I think that's actually better applied to the new Left, but that tendency HAS indeed existed in the past. When I was growing up in Virginia, it was against the law to have sex (married or not) other than in the missionary position. Now, what real purpose did such a law serve?

I will agree with Cass, at least as far as this libertarian is concerned, some regulations of the market do need to exist, otherwise there will be abuses perpetrated (and people will be deprived of their property and liberty by force or fraud), and that is antithetical to a libertarian. Find me a free-market anarchist if you want someone who is opposed to ALL regulation (right up until they get ground under its wheels).

Grim said...

I was definitely not thinking of you, Cass, when I wrote that.

On the other hand, there's a distinction worth a difference between "regulation" and "interference." It's regulation to have your courts enforce contracts. It's interference to insist that contracts with certain terms be made available as a condition of being in the market. And that sort of thing is the kind of thing that generally gets opposed, whether in housing or health care or whatever.

Ymar Sakar said...

People that support the Left will never get liberty, no matter how they rationalize it as being good for Demoncrats.