Showing posts with label Thomas Jefferson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Jefferson. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The John Birch Society and The Tea Party: Liberty That Includes Subjugation

In the past, I have written briefly about the Tea party but only to note the irrational nature of its body politic. I speculated that such a brief narrative was needed and nothing more. Honestly, as a man of African descent, I don’t desire to give them attention, since it appears it is all they want. But my confederates seems to be preoccupied with them as if they matter, when they really don’t, seeing it was our in action at the poll rather than their substance that got us stuck with this congress.

The way I see it, this is nothing new. Many of us have no knowledge of history, and barely recall Martin King Jr. let alone the Nativist or John Birch Society. The Tea party, if anything, is just another fringe extremist group coopting politics for they lack mirrors to look themselves in the eye. The John Birch Society was founded by Robert Welch in 1958. It was named after Captain John Birch, who during his military operations in China, was killed by Chinese communists on 25th August, 1945.

The goal of the organization from Welch’s perspective was to establish and operate a "secret, monolithic organization" that would "operate under completely authoritative control at all levels" mainly through its flagship publication American Opinion. However it was politics – a hatred for democrats and Harry S. Truman, and Eisenhower, who he believed were part of a communist conspiracy that fueled his efforts. Similar to today’s Tea Party, that project the fuel against the nation’s first African American President Barack Obama because they desire to project him as being a socialist.

In theory the John Birch society and the tea parties are the same. Maybe that’s why my late great Uncle, Louis Young, whenever some would make him mad he would call them a fringe, radical, Birch society communist.” Lesson being, that they were the real communist working against the American status quo. Welch would be a great Tea Party member, for if any one disagreed with him, all he had to do was call them a communist sympathizer. Just ask John Foster Dulles and Allan W. Dulles .

The John Birch society felt their way of life was under attack and like the Tea Party, they wanted to take America back to the way it was. Maybe this is why they were also vehemently opposed to the Civil Rights movement. The tea-party movement reminds me of people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality and simply Nativist in origin. They even had support from one of my favorite writers and essayist of the modern era, William F. Buckley. Now I did not agree with him political, but he was a wordsmith and smart, smart enough even to get the Republican Party to adopt Barry Goldwater as its presidential candidate.

But what scares me the most about the tea party is extremism, the kind that will not listen or have tolerance for the views and opinions of others. This even is a fear of mine with most African Americans for many of us will avoid civil discussion due to our ineptness of information in general and our inability to listen to any one whom may disagree with us, for if they do, we ignore reason and logic and are quick to interject “hater” as if it is a real rationale.

During the Kennedy administration, a FBI investigation was launched against the top dogs in the Birch Society. Hypocrisy in its purest form since Kennedy himself held similar beliefs, especially concerning integration, civil rights and voting rights for African Americans. After all he and his democratic party voted against all of the aforementioned. Hypocritical I say because in September 1961 the John Birch Society organized the protests against the enrollment of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi.

The irony for me, and one reason I consider the present day Tea Party, more like the John Birch Society than any independent movement against taxation is because the people they purport to admire, namely Thomas Jefferson, albeit smart, was just as backwards in the universal understanding of the concepts of liberty and freedom.

Jefferson is the personification all of the Tea Party and their precursor movement the John Birch Society and I understand why. Here is a man who has is image imbued in the nation’s capital as the embodiment of liberty and freedom. Yes, he fought against the Stamp Act, which taxed everything from newspapers to dice and was passed by the British House of Commons in 1765 by a vote of 294 to 42. However, this is the same man who owned more than 600 slaves over his life time across multiple plantations but wrote “all men are created equal.” He even wrote and supported laws to stop the importation of slaves to the colonies, but only in refutation to the crown. Over his life he only freed two slaves and was a rapist of black women who even fathered children with them. When he died, he still did not free his slaves but rather left them to his family as part of his estate or sold them to pay off his debts.

Today’s Tea party is an extension of the America that cannot accept or belive a person of African descent is a true citizen - born on these shores or not. They would be more supporttive of any black many to be in the basement of the Whitehouse, like the wife of James K. Polk, who turned the basement of the Whitehouse into a quarters for slaves, than have a man of color sitting in the oval office. They are equal to the white supremacist, who manifested disdain for any black man who held or desired to hold a political office for their belief was that they were not entitled to such not being white. They would be more akin to the men who were murders, or whipped black men (like Andrew J. Flowers of Tennessee) for running against and beating a white man for political office. They would be like those who would tell Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first African American to serve in either house of congress, was blocked because white politicians, that he did not meet the constitutional requirements that a person be a citizen for at least nine years before serving as a senator. Their position being that blacks had only been free since the fourteenth amendment in 1868 and Revels was elected to serve in 1870 making him many years short of this standard (original birthers).

Yes the present day tea party admire Jefferson, more for his views, which included the beliefs that blacks were intellectually inferior, lazy and didn’t work hard and maintained run down appearances. They believe as he wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia that blacks were not the equals of whites and that “deep root prejudices entertained by the whites… will probably never end but in the extermination of one or the other race.” Yes the Tea party is an extension of these execrated beliefs and all they do is in an effort to dehumanize others of non-European origin, in particulars African Americans, especially if male and President of the United States.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Information is the currency of democracy

Last I heard the United States was supposedly a bastion of democracy. You know freedom of expression, speech, information and religion. But it seems that only is consistent and true when expression, speech and religion is in support of the United Sates.

I find it strange that the principles that we as a nation promote that make us different and stand out, that the rest of the world - namely democracy, and what we fight for in other places is really just a willy nilly catch phrase. It is OK for us to put and plant what we think and call democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan - even if folk do not want such or even if we fail. But when other folk use our idealistic tendencies it becomes sacrilegious.




















Last I heard the United States was supposedly a bastion of democracy. You know freedom of expression, speech, information and religion. But it seems that only is consistent and true when expression, speech and religion is in support of the United Sates.

I find it strange that the principles that we as a nation promote that make us different and stand out, that the rest of the world - namely democracy, and what we fight for in other places is really just a willy nilly catch phrase. It is OK for us to put and plant what we think and call democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan - even if folk do not want such or even if we fail. But when other folk use our idealistic tendencies it becomes sacrilegious.

Our "imperial arrogance" asserts I guess, that the only folks with rights to a free and pen society are us and no one else. We have the audacity to proclaim being open, democratic and proponents of the free sharing of information unless it pertains to information of ours. Then we become the incarnate of Mussolini and fascism. Expression is obviously OK except for the Internet. Why? I cannot answer, but i can say we use our power to make private enterprises including Paypal and Amazon.com and master card to control what the supreme courts have considered expression as well - money, when anything we disagree with is cited or revealed. It is just ridiculous, the greatest democracy in the world asking for an Internet site to be shut down and its owner killed or jailed for sharing information that he did not steal.

How quick we are to reference Thomas Jefferson but forget it was he who wrote “Information is the currency of democracy." I just find it two-faced to say on the one hand we are a Nation of liberty and freedom yet on the other hold freedom of the Internet as being completely different. Even condemning China for their censorship but we espouse the same behavior and practice from a governmental locution regarding Wikileaks. Common sense tells me that if one condemns wikileaks we have to do the same with the New York Times and other web sites.

Freedom in the US is a myth. This is the only postulate that can be contrived from this entire wikileaks fiasco. Such is even more convoluted when we have no laws to even assert criminal behavior on the web sites owners behalf outside of an outdated 1917 espionage act that deals with maps.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

America: A Nation of Peter Griffin's and Homer Simpson's

Sometimes I wonder what has happened to America. On the one hand you have folk who occupy themselves with celebrity culture and reality television and on the other, extreme zealots that use presupposed intellect to propound lunacy and outright hatred. In either instance, both sides of the above coin redefine idiocy and make it seem like stupidity has replaced suma cum laude.

Now as far as the first side goes, they are just as dangerous as the race baiting, islamaphobic nativist that are on the other end of the continuum and equally as dangerous. They tend to know when Lil Wayne is getting out of prison and how many times Lindsey Lohan has been arrested that who is their representative in the state senate or how to solve a polynomial.

It is this segment of the population mainly responsible for America ranking 26 in the world in math, science and reading comprehension. There book is the music video and they read TMZ and other entertainment blogs as if the information they contained was just as valuable as the Wall Street Journal. They are more apt to spend time in clubs, bars, lenox mall and the local car wash than the PTA, library, or helping their kids do homework.

Unfortunately these folk are not our nations only problem, for on the other end of the spectrum is a cavalcade of ignorance just as appalling. Although rather knowledgeable, this group lacks the ability to lucidly employ reason, problem solve or think critically. They unlike the previous who are oblivious to all outside the entertainment industry and have a penchant to allow fear and the disability of retrograde amnesia with respect to history, to direct their understanding of the world.


It seems these folk hate all that is not reflective of traditional White Anglo Saxon Protestant culture. The hate the current president for several reasons – that he is Black, has a name unlike theirs and that he lives in the Whitehouse. They even compare him to both Hitler and Stalin, while forgetting these two fought against each other in World War 2 and that on the down low, they believe in the racial superiority that Hitler preached. They have a disdain for other ethnic groups and religions for example, like Muslims and immigrants in particularly from Mexico; while confidently forgetting they come from similar origins.

Using the example of Islam, they forget theirs a history of Popes Innocent the III and Gregory IX, who massacred and murdered people, conducted the inquisition against heretics in the name of their one true God and religion – Christianity. Doing the work of a God in their views supported the beheading of non-believers and burning them at the stake. No different than the horrid beliefs of Islamic Sharia Law in my purview regarding infidels.

Or the case of Mexican immigrants, forgetting how they came to these lands without papers, illegally, cutting off heads of the Native Americans who were here before them, murdering women and children in order to steal their land – this too in the name of their white god.

This America I live in is backwards. They pray for TI not to go to prison but let Mumia Abu Jamal rot in prison with no interest. They applaud Thomas Jefferson as a founding father but ignore his documented goal to take without trade, the land of Native Americans and his wish for their extermination. I even just read a piece by John Avlon of the Daily Beast noting that 46 books have been published demonizing President Obama in his first two years of office compared to 6 and 11 for George Bush and Bill Clinton at the same period of their presidencies.

So why? Why is this bivalve of my America in 2010? Took me a while to come to a reasonable conclusion but all I could come up with was that this nation has been reduced to these types of people. One the one side, there are the Homer Simpsons and on the other, the Peter Griffins. The rest of us are in the middle shaking our heads, moving them from left to right as if we are watching a tennis match.

Monday, April 05, 2010

sovereignty, liberity, freedom, rights or privilege

It is only fitting that on this day we revisit history and not just any history, but that which empowered one Martin Luther King Jr., to embark on the continuation of the works, ideas and beliefs of freedom and liberty. Yes freedom and liberty for even with knowledge of King, Frantz Fanon, and Thomas Jefferson, such knowledge is lost on the hearts and minds of others. I say these because I have come to the empirical conclusion that many folks of my ethnic persuasion have accepted that we are free or even worse – think we are free. Truth is that many can not tell the difference nor explain what separates liberty from freedom, or a right from a privilege.

For me, the concepts all start with the fundamental understanding of sovereignty – a construct imbued in us not from or by any man but rather a Supreme Being or higher power. Sovereignty means supreme or highest in power. To be sovereign means to be independent of, and unlimited by, any other; possessing, or entitled to, original authority or jurisdiction. This is what liberty and freedom are based on in these United States of America with respect to the un-alien-able rights men documented in the constitution.

I say this because a sovereign individual is self-reliant and does not need anyone (even government) to provide for him, protect him from himself nor tell him what to do. To be sovereign means to be responsible for ones own actions, to be financial independent and free from unnecessary government interference – basically living the life he desires. The problem again is that many do not understand theses concepts or how mandates are in direct opposition from the aforementioned concepts.

Recently Obama passed a Health Care reform bill that mandates folks buy health insurance, similar in the vein that we are mandated to purchase auto insurance and or wear seat belts (if your state demands such by law). Truth is some states do not and that there were times that it was not required to buy auto insurance or wear seatbelts. Many may be too young to remember such but it is true. When I mentioned my problem with this to a friend, he told me that he was glad such was mandated because driving is not a right but rather a privilege. I said that anything can do, create or think of is legal and provided to me by that greater than me and not a man. Also added that by your logic, reading and learning is a privilege also for that is how slave masters saw it – that they could decided for you as government entities do now. I also added that also thought it was unnecessary for marriage license, gun permits and driver’s license. Again he disagreed.So I reminded him of why we have both.

There was a time when there was no such thing as either, that is until or near the end of slavery. Historically, all the states outlawed the marriage of blacks and whites. Not until the mid 1800’s did some states allow such but in order to do so, they were mandated to received a license from the state (had to get permission to do an act which without such permission would have been illegal). Blacks Law Dictionary notes historically that a marriage license is defined as, "A license or permission granted by public authority to persons who intend to intermarry." "Intermarry" is defined in Black’s Law Dictionary as, "Miscegenation; mixed or interracial marriages." Up until this period their was no such thing and now states all use them as a way to make money for God requires no such permit.

The same is true with respect to Gun permits. Throughout much of American history, gun control was used as a method for keeping blacks due to the racial fears of whites. Racist arms laws were on the books before the US was established. The French Black Code (required Louisiana colonists to stop "any black carrying any potential weapon, such as a cane)." If a black refused to stop on demand, and was on horseback, the colonist was authorized to "shoot to kill." Even before that the sixteenth century the colony of New Spain, prohibited all blacks, free and slave, from carrying arms. Mississippi went further, and prohibited any ownership of a dog by a black person. Such restrictions increased dramatically after Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831. Virginia's response to Turner's Rebellion prohibited free blacks "to keep or carry any firelock of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead". Simply, America has a fear of armed blacks based on the collective unconscious of what many made Africans in America Experience. Even the end of slavery in did not eliminate or change racist gun control laws. Blacks even needed to obtain a license before carrying or owning a gun or knife when such was not required for whites. Even today the same practices based on race via mandates stem from what we saw in the years of slavery. From public housing residents being singled out for gun bans to so-called "Gun sweeps" by police in "high crime neighborhoods.

All I am trying to say that we speak and accept these mandates by the government and they are often accepted under the guise of privilege as opposed to a right. We do not value freedom or liberty as much as we say or we would have continued the struggle that ore fore parents lead. It seems again as we think we are free, or think we have made or thin\k we have overcome, but the truth is we accept with out question. Accepting mandates as such makes us slaves, obviates us from individual responsibility and takes away our enumerated rights stated in the constitution. I mean it is not rocket science – if we are not sovereign, we have no liberty, if we have no liberty we have no freedom, if we have no freedom we have no rights – all that is left is privilege, which by definition can be given and/or taken away at anytime.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Escargot instead of apple pie

Just found out today that the United States Pentagon has requested the Air Force, One, the airplane that transports our commander in chief, be built over seas, over seas in France. Seems that these US citizens feel that we as a nation will be better served if folks who are not American are best fit and prepared to build the best dang luxury jet in the world than folks born on these shores.

Doesn’t make too much since to me. Especially in this age in which safety is paramount. Now I know Americans can be just as likely to see harm come to our great leader, but I do not think they will be more likely than foreigners. Nope, I aint xenophobic, I just think that doing such, especially in this economy sends the wrong message.

For almost twenty years, Boeing Co. has made the 747 jumbo jet that has become equal to the flying White House. As such, it is seen is aw inspiring to other nations and a since of pride for Americans – I just don’t think it is sending a message that will encourage…. Not to mention, I know it got some with top-secret, high-tech stuff that I can’t even begin to name. However, I would not want anyone other than Americans to be privy to what this stuff is. Seems to make the job for our security forces, especially the Secret Service a lot harder. What sense does it make to have the internal blueprints of this vehicle in the hand of another nation, even if that nation is considered a friendly nation?

Although this is not schedule to start until 2016, it still seems like a slap in the face to me for of all folks, it should be our government that should by American first just as much, if not more than the American people. This is not a slap in the face of Airbus, the likely builder of the next generation of Air force one, but more so the Pentagon, who tried to sneak this tid bit of info under the cloak of darkness. And it is not as if Airbus would build a cheaper plane. Reports suggest that the Airbus A380, if passenger planes are compared, will cost $50 million more than the new 747-8.

I read once where Thomas Jefferson wrote “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” I do not thinking the consideration of building what we can build at home abroad, at a likely higher cost is taking care of the American public. Likewise I think doing such is no way protecting us, neither in the form of jobs, nor in terms of our national security. This aint no slap in the face to Airbus as I said, and I may be putting too much into this, but last I looked the Presidential limousine was a Cadillac and it was made in America. If Air force one becomes a flag ship product for Airbus, we may as well make the next limousine a Mercedes Benz, or better yet, replace Apple pie with escargot..

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

contours of a tragedy

Point of Order: 1] Somebody inform Jones how he can correct an error in Wikapedia. Suggesting that Euclid was Greek when he was born in Africa, died in Africa, and never left the continent a day in his life.

2] Shouts out to my folk at Just Kiss N make-up for giving me the Kreative Blogger award.

I hate to do this but I am gonna leave the pestilence of politics for a moment to dive into an area I love greatly, well two really, history and math. I was reading someone’s blog yesterday and I am sorry I cannot provide the link. But in essence they were talking about the incarceration rates in NYC. I was taken back by their conclusion for although true, they were some what fatuous in their implications. In addition, they seemed to just be thrown out into the blogosphere for no other reason than that (my opinion) but it was a good read.

Without a firm historical presentation, the numbers in social research seem to, really often end up meaning nothing. For me, through the Euclidian structure of how I visualize thought, it is possible to decussate axioms of outcomes, both in time and practice. And I use Euclidian for it references the understanding of relationships with respect to distance (history) and angles in both planes and space. This is constant regardless of geography, region or time if space is seen as the constant. For this it says that prison and slavery are one in the same.

In the blog post, the author seemed amazed. But one should not be if a descent purview of history and thought is held in command. The Spanish government for example started out with the prohibition of having to many male slaves and in 1503, around the start of the Spanish Caribbean Empire, they enacted by philosophy and math a design that would approximate one slave for every three free white men. This was under the reign of Emperor Charles V. Other countries desired an even higher ration of white me (one African slave for every four free white men).

These actions tended to dictate not only population and how slave institutions (including prisons) functioned numerically, but also the philosophical beliefs that would maintain such disparities as evinced currently with prison populations. From David Hume, the supposedly noted philosopher to Thomas Jefferson, we can see how such transpired. Especially if you read Hume’s essay “Of National Character” (1754) or Jefferson’s “Notes on Virginia” (1781). Both claim the natural inferiority of the African with Jefferson even suggesting that Africans were barely above the level of thought of narration. Both said a lot more foul shit but I will not venture any further while attempting to make my point that the numbers we see are the result of historical practices and have been consistent since the days of Alexis DeToqville.

Moreover, such has been manifest by views as the previous to the extent that the belief in natural inferiority and dimness of Africans obviously would mean that education would be impossible and that a system of education, based on the liberal arts (European culture and history) would result in what I wrote in a blog post in February 2006:

If more than 50% of students drop out from high school generally, speaking, how many do you think will be coming from our schools in our neighborhoods? Take it a step farther, if 80 percent of high school drop outs end up in prison and 40 percent of all inmates are darker people, yet these people make only 13 percent of the population, what kind of educated populous will remain to do battle, represent and demand that what we put in we should get back?

There will be none for they will be enslaved, this time in prison. In actuality, I astonished myself at how simplistic the trigonometry regarding these angles connect. So in summary, this is why we see the numbers we do regarding black males in prison; this is why we should not be astonished; this is why we should not be amazed when we see more of us in prison than graduating high schools or attending college. These unfortunately are the contours of a tragedy from a Euclidian perspective, for prison is the higher education in many respects in the US for men of African descent. For with prison, they can maintain a 1 to 3, or even 1 to 4 ratio - for we outside the walls may as well be slaves too. vote

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

ignorance and freedom are incompatible

You know we bring a lot of stuff on ourselves as a people. No matter what our race or gender, in America, there are certain things expected if one wants or claims to be a citizen of this country

First off, I am one that believes if one doesn’t know their rights, hey you have no rights, and don’t give me this constitutional shit about amendments and all. I would even venture to speculate that most folk’s aint never even read the constitution and may have even complained when they had to read it 8th grade civics class.

Personally, I consider myself to be a sovereign entity, or citizen-sovereign, for I and only I can “so ever reign” over myself. In fact, I may be wrong, but this is what I have reduced the general corpus of discussion to be about at and during the Constitutional convention in the late 1780s. It was implemented as such to limit the power of the federal government. I mean that’s what they fought against (the did not want or felt hat they were subjects of King George III). To buttress this position, they also created a Bill of Rights to formalize rights of the individual juxtapose to the government such that they were Un-a-lienable.

But for many of us, this means nothing, but yet we always complain about what other folks do to us versus what we do to ourselves. So folks, I know it is appealing to know whom Rhianna dating, or that Prince Henry were in Afghanistan, or that people painting Air Force One’s for Barak Obama. But on the real, it aint important nor essential at all.

I say this to repeat that our problems, our foibles and our consternation, especially as it relates to government, community, family and politics is our own entire fault. For we are a dumbed down and stupid nation as a whole. It makes me realize that that is what Thomas Jefferson meant when he said, “ignorance and freedom are incompatible.” Ok I’m finished.

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