Posted on 12/29/2008 5:33:54 AM PST by Kaslin
What does Caroline Kennedy have in common with black America? If your answer is not much, I'd tend to agree with you.
When I think of Caroline, I think of Manhattan and Park Avenue, not the Bronx and Brooklyn. I think of Brentwood and Beverly Hills, not Watts and South Central Los Angeles.
But there is something that Caroline and black America do have in common. The Democratic Party.
Whether Kennedy succeeds in her effo rt to slide into Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat will have little to do with her Democratic Party bona fides. Per her policy positions ticked off the other day, she is in perfect and predictable liberal alignment with party boilerplate. If she fails, it will be for reasons other than her views.
So what exactly is the common political ground that Kennedy bluebloods share with the 90 percent of America's blacks who vote for Democrats?
A careful look shows the deep internal contradictions of the Democratic Party and the complexity of the political psyche of black Americans.
Ironically, despite Democratic Party rhetoric about economic inequities and wealth and income gaps in America, those gaps are more pronounced inside the Democratic tent than inside the Republican one.
According to exit polls from November's election, Barack Obama captured the vote of America' richest and America's poorest. Fifty-two percent of those with incomes over $200,000 voted for Obama and more than 60 percent of those earning under $30,000 did.
Our wealthiest senator, John Kerry, is a Democrat, as is our wealthiest House member, Jane Harman.
The nation's two wealthiest men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are both, by all indication, Democrats.
What political aspirations can black Americans, whose median income lags the nation's share with these multimillionaires and billionaires?
There is little common ground regarding values.
Church attendance correlates reliably over time with party affiliation, and this remained true in this last election. Those who attend church frequently vote Republican. Those who don't usually vote Democratic. Except blacks.
Blacks, in fact, have the highest church attendance in the country. Seventy-six percent of black Democrats attend church at least monthly. Sixty-seven perce nt of Republicans do and 50 percent of white Democrats do.
A recent Gallup poll shows blacks more aligned with Republicans than Democrats on social issues -- moral acceptability of homosexuality, abortion, and sexual promiscuity.
On energy and environmental issues, blacks poll more closely with conservatives than with liberals. It's because these are pocketbook issues. Working blacks have little interest in paying the higher taxes and bearing the higher costs that will result from chasing global warming windmills and displacing cheap hydrocarbon energy with exotic government-subsidized alternatives. Lower energy costs also put blacks on the side of offshore drilling for oil and gas.
How about education? Wealthy liberals, despite having their own kids in private schools, oppose school choice. When a black family is given the opportunity to pull its child out of a failing public school and send him or her to a church school or another alternative, they are grateful.
So where's the common ground? Income redistribution. A recent Zogby poll shows 80 percent of Democrats, 90 percent of liberals, and 76 percent of blacks supporting taxing the weal thy to give money back to low-income Americans.
Despite everything else, blacks vote to stay on the liberal plantation. Pop psychologists would call the relationship between wealthy liberals and blacks co-dependence.
Republicans are wrong if they think they'll win blacks on social issues alone. They need to help blacks understand that lim ited government provides the economic mobility and opportunity they need and that the welfare, redistribution state does the opposite. They must help blacks gain self-confidence so that they can enjoy the benefits that can only come from freedom.
So far, Republicans have failed to do this. Which is another reason why they now sit on the outside looking in.
So your resolution is to just throw up your arms and give up? It has never hurt to try and keep on trying. Eventually most will see the light
Excellent points bump
bingo. bttt.
Looking from T Sowell’s “unconstrained” vs “constrained” visions of humanity,
the left seeks to address results directly, but directly confiscating wealth from the wealthy and giving it to the “poor”. This is the unconstrained “solution”.
The right seeks to apply the wisdom of the ages, that individual hard work and freedom and entreneurship lead to wealth. This is the constrained method of “solving” problems.
Yes, the left, with their “unconstrained” vision of the human condition are WRONG and DANGEROUS, but it does help your own sanity to understand where they’re coming from.
Sowell is a great thinker!
Except for that word in that sentence it's a pretty good article.
In US politics you get ZERO credit for actually solving a problem, but you get oodles of political support if you can slyly perpetuate a problem while simultaneously blaming the other party for it — this the Democrats have always excelled at.
You don't get it.
They aren't taking MONEY from the wealthy.
They're stealing INCOME from the middle and upper middle classes, before they ever possess it.
The assets of the wealthy are untouched by this scheme, while the labor of the middle classes is undermined to buy lower class votes - specifically, the votes of the low-IQ incompetents who cannot rise in our system.
Blacks, in fact, have the highest church attendance in the country. Seventy-six percent of black Democrats attend church at least monthly.
But how many of those churches echo the views of obama’s minister the hate filled Rev. Wright?
When the Brinks trucks start pulling up to Katzenberg's and Springsteen's estates to confiscate their sh*t, give me a call.
No wonder 95% of the gimmie-gimmie vote went for Obama, they saw him as the end of that excuse.
That “cold turkey detox” is usually followed or accompanied by a civil war. It will be a civil ware between those that seek to maintain a “free” society and simply correct the issues that caused the down fall (i.e., get rid of welfare and social security, re-institute self-reliance and individual purpose, etc...) and those that now realize their cash cow has expired and seek to take complete control to “equalize” the perceived imbalances that have occurred in the past (a few recent examples of this type of civil war are South Africa, Mozambique, heck, MOST of Africa).
As you can see by the examples, the “free” society has not fared well in those endeavors.
I guess this is where I get lost. Why isn't it obvious that freedom and limited government are better? Why does anyone need to teach this? If people can't see the benefits of freedom, it's because they wont think for themselves. There is no confidence-building exercise that will replace common sense. If someone needs help for something this basic, how will they protect and perpetuate it? Intellectual laziness isn't a disease and can't be fixed by a third party.
Maybe she should ask for little Barry’s seat. Their politics seem to aline in the fact neither are ever working; neither has experience; and both could vote Present and run for POTUS.
Of course, Caroline would have to get a gig for the public like exercising.
And now we see the end result of the dumbing down of America! It was not to destroy the constitution, it was to mine and foster votes. The net result is a loss of self-reliance AND complete government dependence: a two-for-one scenario.
The real problem is YES it can be taught. It was taught in the past: by parents and family and society as a whole. If you got caught doing something wrong, you were punished and no one thought a second about YOUR rights: common sense. If you didn’t grow enough or hunt enough food you died: common sense. There are too many examples for me to write them all, but you see what I am saying.
These things were taught and are still being taught in small towns across America, but unfortunately, both, the faculty and the student body, are dwindling exponentially.
That's a South American banana republic pattern - the rich use the poor and criminal poor to pound the middle class. It's class warfare at it's ugliest.
“As you can see by the examples, the “free” society has not fared well in those endeavors.”
Spooky. Ain’t it?
Unfortunately (and I say this with no joy), I am beginning to doubt Black social conservatism.
Why is it that seemingly every single Black politician is an across-the-board social liberal? They can be from the deepest, most rural part of the South, can have been raised in "sanctified" churches from day one, and yet once they become politicians it isn't just the economic or racial issues (which I can understand) . . . automatically this person becomes a "profound leftwing intellectual," supporting abortion, "gay rights," Darwinism, and "separation of church and state" (how many sermons did they hear on that topic?).
And worst of all, whenever a Black politician arises who actually votes and speaks out on these issues, he is labeled an "Uncle Tom."
Maybe the leftwing revisionist historians are right. Maybe Black Americans never were fundamentalists, and all their sermonizing was a coded way of teaching their people the Dialectic.
But I see zero evidence that today's Republicans believe this, themselves.
John Kennedy died at precisely the right moment to freeze his 'legacy' in place. Had he lived, he would have been subject to the same cultural gravitational forces that have pulled the rest of the democrat gaggle toward the black hole of neoMarxism.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.