Get that damn flag !!!
THE SLAVE OWNERS’
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
STATE LEGISLATOR THINKS OUR FLAG IS A RAG
By:Barton Wong
So Henri Brooks, a Tennessee state legislator, refuses to take the Pledge of Allegiance because "the flag represents a nation of former slave owners to her." This black Memphis Democrat and supposed representative of the people has been asked by the Speaker to wait outside the House Chamber while the pledge was recited, but Brooks says that violates her constitutional rights. And guess what? The usual suspects, the favorite lobbying group and personal legal defense fund for blustering blowhards, the ACLU, agrees! Of course for this, Rep. Brooks now has obtained honorary membership into that most select and hard to get into of clubs; flag-burners and other such cynics for whom the American flag is merely a metaphorical piece of rag cloth, also defended by the ACLU. As OpinionJournal.com so succinctly asks Rep. Brooks, "would that Constitution you're citing be the one written by a bunch of dead, white, male slaveholders?"
Meanwhile, in further proof that insanity is indeed infectious, the very "Reverend" Al Sharpton is continuing his hunger strike over his conviction for his participation in the Vieques protests and in Chicago, the three-day National Reparations Convention is getting under way. Sharpton is his usual pompous, self-aggrandizing self who likes to compare himself to Nelson Mandela and say like, Mandela, he’ll go from prison to president. Well, good luck. The only attention you’re attracting, Al, is from a jaded press looking for a freak human interest item to put between the latest "dog saves boy from drowning" story and the successful Siamese twins separation. Even the left-leaning fourth estate doesn’t take you seriously anymore, but you’re probably too busy combing the second bottle of mousse into your toupee to notice. As for your hunger strike, your latest auditions in the role of "Civil Rights Martyr" du jour will probably pay off in spades. I look forward to your future commercials for Slimfast, Al.
Meanwhile, the cause of reparations continues its serene course into historic inevitability. Like the principle of "Equality For All, civil rights, or giving the vote for women," reparations will be recognized as something as right and natural and inescapable, and according to its supporters, years from now, the people will be shouting hosannas in the streets and naming national holidays after the people who thought of this wonderful idea, and there’ll be heaven on earth at long last. All we have do to achieve this resplendent goal is to simply get rid of all rational political discourse in America and replace it with knee-jerk slogan-shouting and lots of irrational screaming, an objective which seems to be admirably on its way to final achievement.
What connects these three situations, other than as examples of how far the Civil Rights movement has degenerated since the 60s, is that they are perfect illustrations of the obsessive nit picking style in American politics that some people seem to like to indulge in. For reasons known only to themselves, certain politicians seem to focus on one character trait or action of people or peoples they dislike, and obsess and carp on it till they achieve their ultimate goal of discrediting them. In Rep. Brooks’ case, the fact many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves completely discredits them and everything they accomplished in her eyes. In Al Sharpton’s case, he seems to want to put the United States justice system on trial just because it convicted him and he simply wants to turn the tables on the system which is "oppressing" him and of course, garner good publicity for himself and his "cause", and for the advocates of reparations, the notion of the Civil War freeing the slaves or that there might be the notion of racial equality in today’s America is a pure sham put on by a white, racist establishment, a situation that must by compensated financially, because "we owe them."
All this is the veritable nonsense it appears to be and dangerous nonsense at that. I, for one, believe that the hypocrisies and flaws of the Founding Fathers should indeed be exposed in schools, if only to take away the superhuman air they all too often have accumulated about them and prove that they were human beings as well. And indeed, it can be argued that they wasted an invaluable opportunity to destroy the evil institution of slavery in America once and for all, and make America into a moral example for all the world to behold, and that if they had taken that courageous step, the United States wouldn’t have had to pay in blood 80 years later and the racial situation would be much improved in America today, but it must be remembered that the Founding Fathers were not only heroes, but politicians as well, and if they needed to compromise and strike a deal to achieve an united front, they were more than prepared to do so. However, these facts must never get in the way of the sheer enormity of what they ultimately succeeded in attaining, and that they were fundamentally good people. Just as the Pledge of Allegiance doesn’t just apply to slave owners and their descendants, the Constitution of the United States of America isn’t just "The Slave Owners’ Constitution," but a document of human rights for all Americans. What the Founding Fathers achieved, in the final analysis, overcame and counts for more than any of their own individual flaws.
As for Sharpton, Jackson, and their kind, not only do they obsess in racial nit picking, but they benefit from it as well. It appears that just because they were born with a certain color of skin, they get to call themselves "civil rights leaders" and the heirs of Martin Luther King’s legacy. Would the liberal establishment and the press really take these preposterous and opportunistic phonies seriously, if they weren’t black? Would these same people be less forgiving of the enormous character flaws they display for all the world to see, if they weren’t black? But as Toni Morrison, the Noble laureate for literature, in a now infamous New York Times editorial, in seeking to defend the impeached President Clinton, proceeded to list what might be bluntly called a list of black, male stereotypes, attributed them to the President, and called him in that now notorious phase, "the first black president," I guess all is forgiven. Apparently black isn’t just a skin colour, but now a commendation that can awarded to any allies of our present civil rights movement to help explain their moral turpitude. Gee, Ms. Morrison, if Mr. Clinton wasn’t, as you say, "black," I might be inclined to think that he was some sort of, you know, scumbag.
Already, this type of thinking has born its fruit, in all of places, a middle school in Texas. A 13-year-old student, for the crime of carrying in open, a book with the Confederate battle flag on it because he was doing a class report of Robert E. Lee was assaulted and beaten up by a Hispanic and a black student. As the Hispanic student reportedly said to the young man just before he attacked him, "You racist . . . you racist! I'm gonna kick your a__! I don't know when, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but I'm gonna kick your a__!," and later the black student reportedly said to the Hispanic student, "Hey Leonardo, Ryan doesn't like Mexicans, he wants you to go back to Mexico." Apparently, to their young minds, because anything to do with the Confederacy was racist, and the young man was carrying a book with a Confederate flag on it, the young man must have been racist. Even worse than this twisted logic, was some of the comments made weeks before by the school’s Assistant Principal, another Ms. Morrison, who had previously suspended the young man for three days and then forced him to apologize to every Black student in the school for being a "racist." His crime was wearing a shirt with an one-inch by one-and-a-half inch Confederate flag patch on it. As the Assistant Principal told the victim’s mother, "We must make an example of Ryan. He is a racist."
Perhaps we need to send a message to Rep. Brooks, the "Reverends" Sharpton and Jackson, the two Ms. Morrisons, and all of their paranoid ilk. Perhaps every American needs to stand up one last time and say to them, "Slavery was bad!" and "Racism is bad!" and that almost every American today is not and never will be a conscious racist and those that are, deserve to and will be shunned and ostracized by not only them, but by the general public as well. But I doubt even this reassurance would satisfy them. After all, if America wasn’t such a racist nation, what would these guardians of our morality do for a living?
And as for Rep. Brooks, if she is still convinced that the "Pledge of Allegiance" applies only to slave owners, she really only has two choices. As a state legislator, she can introduce legislation to abolish the Pledge, the Constitution, and all the other relics of those dead, white males and rewrite the history books. Rep. Brooks could look to the instances of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, other countries where "examples of people had to be made," as models. Or if she insists, she could always travel back in time and try to change history for herself. Professor Ronald Mallet of Connecticut University, recently announced that he had found a practical way to build a time machine. All that was required was a circulating beam of light and temperatures close to absolute zero. Hey, it’s worth a try, Rep. Brooks. After all, nothing seems to be able to stop our current civil rights movement in their endless quest for "equality" and "racists," not even reality. |
