Farrakhan and the Founders

On Saturday August 17 in Washington, D.C. this year, thousands showed up for the Millions for Reparations Mass Rally. As the name suggests, the attendees were trying to provoke a transfer of wealth in their favor. But one of the leaders threw them a curve.

"We're not asking white people [for reparations]," said Louis Farrakhan, who headlined the event. "We are demanding what is justly ours." [1] What Farrakhan believes is justly theirs is massive amounts of land, which the government should hand over to him and his followers. "As a nation within a nation, we need land as a basis of economic and political independence," Farrakhan said. "We cannot settle for some little jive token — we need millions of acres of land that black people can build and use for ourselves."

He said blacks need "payment for the destruction of our minds; the robbery of our language, our culture, our history, our religion, our God, our self-dignity, and our self-worth." But, he added, in the most telling moment of his 15-minute speech, "we cannot accept a cash payment because a fool and his money will soon part."

Farrakhan's followers should be worried. Not only does their leader consider them dupes, he knows he can tell them so to their faces without eliciting offense.

In a speech made for a different march seven years ago, Farrakhan identified what he believes is the real problem with the country: white supremacy. According to Farrakhan, this is what our founders really founded. "The [original Seal of the United States] and the Constitution reflect the thinking of the founding fathers, that this was to be a nation by White people and for White people. Native Americans, Blacks, and all other non-White people were to be the burden bearers for the real citizens of this nation." [2]

The focus of his 1995 speech was a phrase he borrowed from the Constitution's preamble. "When Jefferson said, 'toward a more perfect union,' he was admitting that the union was not perfect," Farrakhan declared, attributing authorship to the wrong founder. "[W]e are gathered here to collect ourselves for a responsibility that God is placing on our shoulders to move this nation toward a more perfect union."

Farrakhan believes the union will move closer to perfection if it hands over a country's worth of land to his gang. And the reason it has fallen short of perfection is because our founders were racists who wanted to rule with an aristocracy of white slaveowning males.

We know many of the founders owned slaves. Does it follow they were seeking to perpetuate the "peculiar institution" or establish an elitist white plutocracy? On the contrary, in spite of their inconsistency, the founders created the legal system necessary to demolish slavery and every other wrong that stood opposed to man's rights. No one on earth had ever done this before.

The Declaration of Independence (the document Jefferson did write) proclaimed that all men possess rights by virtue of being alive, that the purpose of government was to secure these rights. It was unanimously approved by the Second Continental Congress, not carelessly, but after three days of debate. Jefferson's original draft included an antislavery passage that congress deleted because it misleadingly charged the king with maintaining the colonial slave trade. Since it couldn't be included with the litany of the king's "repeated injuries and usurpations," the opening statement about man's rights served as congress's implied position on slavery. In support of this Declaration, it forcefully concluded, all members pledged to one another their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

According to delegate John Adams, the mood of congress was somber and quiet as each man came forward to sign the Declaration. They had no illusions about what they were doing. Smiles broke out only once, when the rotund Colonel Harrison of Virginia remarked to Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts: "I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body, you will dance in the air for an hour or two before you are dead." [3]

The fifty-six delegates believed they were signing their own death warrants. This is not what we would expect of men engaged in political subterfuge. White supremacists with much to lose don't put their lives on the line for the rights of man.

Many people then and since have claimed neither Jefferson nor Congress included blacks in the phrase "all men are created equal." Was Jefferson thinking of all men when he wrote that phrase? In the excised passage against slavery in his first draft, Jefferson wrote that the king was determined "to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold." [4] (Jefferson's emphasis) If Jefferson believed blacks were not men, his indictment would have been pointless.

But regardless of his view, the Declaration emerged from the Pennsylvania State House with unanimous approval of "all men" possessing inalienable rights. And "all men," not surprisingly, was taken by most people to mean everyone. And their rights were inalienable — not a loan from the state. This interpretation fueled the abolitionist and women's rights movements. Why would a delegation of educated men bind themselves to such wording if they were seeking a society of white male supremacy?

And why would another assembly of men approve a constitution and bill of rights that limited the power of the rulers, if these men were bigots, as Farrakhan charges? If you're going to subjugate others, you want the sanction of legitimacy — you want legal control of the police, courts, military, and especially the press. Abolitionists were seething, and under the Constitution they could continue their crusade — and did.

After a 3,000-year run, slavery was disappearing from the face of the earth during the first half of the 19th century, thanks mostly to the Enlightenment philosophy of man's rights. The free market, a product of the Enlightenment, accelerated its demise. "[C]apital-intensive agriculture and industry began to render labor-intensive production, including slave labor, uncompetitive," notes economic historian Thomas J. DiLorenzo. "As the economist Ludwig von Mises wrote, 'Servile labor disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free labor; its profitability sealed its doom in the market economy.'" [5]

In most countries slavery died with little or no violence. But when a new American president took office in 1860, rather than fight for peaceful emancipation, he baited the South into a long and devastating war in what could be described as an anti-American Revolution. When the war ended, states rights and the Constitution were among the seriously injured. Reconstruction, far from healing the wounds of the war, inflamed the animosity between the races.

"The one unequivocal good that came of Lincoln's war was the abolition of slavery," DiLorenzo writes. "But the way in which Lincoln chose to end slavery could not possibly have been more divisive." [6]

Today's student of history will certainly feel strong indignation over the treatment accorded to politically dispossessed groups in our past. But the past is gone, along with the guilty parties and the victims. In creating political freedom for all men in principle, our founders provided the moral and legal foundation for freeing all men in fact.

What is destroying us today is not slave-owning planters or Jim Crow segregationists, but a government that claims disposal rights to our lives, liberty, and property. It robs us of all the things Farrakhan laments having lost and just about everything else.* When one considers that intrusive government was what our founders attempted to extirpate, Farrakhan should be among the fathers' meanest bulldogs.

* I urge people to savor the near-extinct feeling of independence by growing their own tax-free, regulation-free, mouth-watering tomatoes.

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References 1. Farrakhan Rails Against 'White Supremacy', Michael L. Betsch, http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=\\Politics\\archive\\200208\\POL20020818a.html

2. Minister Farrakhan challenges black men, CNN.com, October 17, 1995, http://www-cgi.cnn.com/US/9510/megamarch/10-16/transcript/

3. Rosenfeld, Richard N. 1997. American Aurora: A Democratic-Republican Returns. New York: St. Martin¹s Griffin. p. 282.

4. Jefferson's Draft of the Declaration of Independence, http://www.duke.edu/eng169s2/group1/lex3/roughpl.htm

5. DiLorenzo, Thomas J. 2002. The Real Lincoln: A New Look At Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. Roseville, California: Prima Publishing. p. 47.

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A certified Toastmaster, George F. Smith is a freelance writer who welcomes the opportunity to address your group or organization. Send him email at gfs543@bellsouth.net.

from The Laissez Faire Electronic Times, Vol 1, No 30, September 9, 2002 Editor: Emile Zola Publisher: Digital Monetary Trust

" On Saturday August 17 in Washington, D.C. this year, thousands showed up for the Millions for Reparations Mass Rally "

This is outright Bullsheet. There were maybe 300 to 500 cumulative.

At one point the screechey mama of ceremonies was asking those she could see to move to the front so the C-Span cameras could see them.

Most were oblivious to what was going on, and even the VIP seats (50-75 seats) had maybe 5 or 6 people sitting there.

The function turned out to be a confused circus...

I believe a government report in the 90s indicated that the total national debt -- $ 3.7 trillion at the time -- was equal to what the US and the states had paid-out in welfare since the 1930s. Reparations?

That presupposes that all of the money in welfare went to black people.

Is that the case?

Mr. Farrakahn should teach his followers history. The slave trade started when slaves were moved from Africa East mostly, by the Muslims. The American school system insinuates that slaves only came from Africa West to the United States, this is also the perception of the Farrakahn followers and the individuals that seek reparations.

430,000 slaves ended up in the US, 3,500,000 went to Brazil alone.

The decendents of the slaves that came to the US won the lottery. In no other country in world do Blacks have the opportunity that is available in the United States, Senators, Members of Congress, Doctors, Lawyers,education, etc.

"We cannot settle for some little jive token — we need millions of acres of land that black people can build and use for ourselves."

Imagine the insanity of granting their wish. The white-black divide would note be grey anymore. Then the looters would simply say that it was not enough and now they need more land, better land and money (and a six of malt liquor). It would never end.

"Imagine the insanity of granting their wish. The white-black divide would note be grey anymore."

Imagine all of the federal land, land that is currently off the market and for the most part off-limits to citizens, finally back on the market again if this plan were carried through.

Imagine how the Greens and radical Democrats would howl in protest that federal land was no longer being "protected" from us all.

I may not like reparations, but I know that I like letting my political opponents carry out plans that both enrich me in the end as well as turns them against each other.

And make no mistake, the greens can't stand the thought of government land being given away to private citizens.

Bring on the new Oklahoma Land Rush Part Two. We could all use another economic boom, after all, and that's what we got when we gave away the land in what was formerly Indian Territory.

Presuming that this land give-away is a one-time, finite deal, what could be the downside?

Black conservative ping

If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)

Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.

"On Saturday August 17 in Washington, D.C. this year, thousands showed up for the Millions for Reparations Mass Rally"

This is outright Bullsheet. There were maybe 300 to 500 cumulative.

Actually his estimate is accurate. I was there, and two to five thousand is the most likely figure. But I mean, not like that's a record-setting crowd anyway.

Pardon me for waxing reverent, but I don't think that any amount of praise that we've ever give these men has been adequate. Disagreements that we might now have today with various positions or actions of some of them (with the benefit of hindsight that they didn't have) does not even register against the enormity of power of what they did when they signed their names.

I will always be in awe of what they did that day. May we enogh of us one day again be in touch with that type of insight, honor, and resolve.

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