Thomas Nast, “This Is a White Man’s Government,” Harper’s Weekly, 1868
9"And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived wantonly with her, shall bewail her and lament for her when they shall see the smoke of her burning,
10standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, `Alas! Alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour has thy judgment come.'
11"And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:
12the merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls; and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet; all scented wood, all manner of vessels of ivory and most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble;
13and cinnamon, and perfumes, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat; and cattle, and sheep, and horses, and chariots; and slaves, and the souls of men.
14"And the fruits that thy soul lusted after have departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly have departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.
Revelation 18:9-14
The first ten Amendments collectively are commonly known as the Bill of Rights. HistoryAmendment 2 - Right to Bear Arms. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note
A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Race has become metaphorical—a way of referring to and disguising forces, events, classes, and expressions of social decay and economic division far more threatening to the body politic than biological “race” ever was. Expensively kept, economically unsound, a spurious and useless political assent in election campaigns, racism is as healthy today as it was during the Enlightenment. It seems that it has a utility far beyond economy, beyond the sequestering of classes from one another, and has assumed a metaphorical life so completely embedded in daily discourse that it is perhaps more necessary and more on display than ever before.
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
BOYS ON A MISSION
CHRISTIAN PARTNERS IN CRIMINAL INTENT
Just like the Jews with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s, African Americans do not seem to be taking the Republicans candidates’ racist rhetoric seriously. Richard J. Evans illustrates my point in The Third Reich in Power 1933-1939 (2005) where he posits that the shape of the boycott of April 1, 1933 in Berlin and elsewhere, and the subsequent civil service law had a certain silver lining, for it brought Germany’s deeply divided Jews closer together. Already in 1932, in the light of mounting anti-Semitic attacks, regional Jewish associations had decided to establish a national organization, which was set up on February 12, 1933. It did little apart from protesting that it had nothing to do with what the Nazis described as the international campaign for the boycott of German goods.
In September 1933 they organized along with the German Zionists, set up an umbrella organization in the shape of the Reich Representation of German Jews under the chairmanship of the Berlin rabbi Leo Baeck. Its purpose was to regroup and defend Jewish life in the new Germany.
Its leaders urged a dialogue with the Nazis, perhaps with a view to reaching a Concordat like the one the Third Reich had concluded with the Catholics.
Adolf Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933. On March 23 he addressed the Reichstag, in the course of which he acknowledged Christian belief as the " unshakeable foundation of the moral and ethical life of our people". Cardinal Bertram, on March 28, announced that the bishops had dropped their prohibitions against Nazi membership. The bishops' decision opened the way for a Concordat between the Holy See and Hitler's government.[1] The Concordat was signed on July 20, 1933. It gave the Catholic Church what it wanted in order to preserve the autonomy of ecclesiastical institutions and their religious activities; it assured Hitler that the Church would end so-called political Catholicism. Article 31 acknowledged the Church would not support social or political causes.
The Jewish organizations emphasized the patriotic service many Jews had rendered the Reich at the front during the First World War. Jews were not the only Germans to believe that the violence that accompanied the seizure of power world soon dissipate, leaving a more stable, ordered polity. Leo Baeck even encouraged the preparation of a large dossier illustrating the Jewish contribution to German life.
But the dossier was banned before it could be published. The financial penalties imposed on German Jews, the Aryanization of Jewish business and the tightening of restrictions on the export of currency and chattels ensured that German Jews found it increasingly difficult to obtain refuge in countries whose governments did not want immigrants if they were going to be a burden on the welfare system.
Jewish immigrants of working age were often resented because unemployment remained high in many countries as a result of the Great Depression. Jewish organizations in receiving countries did their best to help by providing funds and opportunities for work, organizing visas and the like, but the extent to which they were about to influence government policy was very restricted, and they were hampered in addition by their own fear of arousing anti-Semitism at home. (559) And this was just the beginning of a lesson why not to trust your enemies to do their worst.
THE HISTORY OF BLACKS IN AMERICA ~ THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE
Professor Nell irvin Painter
Nell Irving Painter posits that as long as observers [think] only of European peoples as Americans, the country’s rosy egalitarian image blows nicely. Black authors often generalized about the charactier of white peoople, most of their commentary came/comes in the form of asides embedded in work focused on people of African descent, and their connection to freedom. David Walker is one such writer who addresses their fellow Americans as critics of white supremacy. The history of African American freedom begins in slavery itself and with black abitlitionists like David Walker, where a lesson can be found by present day blacks in the face of the “clear and present danger” from Santorum and Gingrich.
David Walker and his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World
In 1829 David Walker (1785-1830) published and 84-page tract with a jaw-breaking title: David Walker’s Appeal: in four articles, together with a preamble, to the colored citizens of the world, but in particular, and very expressingly to those of the United States of America. Walker was born free in Wilmington, North Carolina, and moved to Boston around 1825 and made his living as a dealer in used clothing. Among his many activities, he wrote for and distributed the nation’s first black newpaper, Freedom’s Journal, and frequently delivered public addresses at black Bostonians’ celebrations—of Haitian independence, for instance, or a visit to Boston by an African prince recently emancipated from southern slavery.
He was a Mason and Methodist (but a critic of black religiousity), Walker was well known and well respeceted as an activist among Boston’s black people, who numbered about one thousand, and within the antislavery community that surrounded William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison reviewed Walker’s Appeal positively in an early number of the Liberator, soon to become the nation’s most influential abolitionist periodical.
Gingrich Uses Food Stamps To Criticize Rivals
by David Welna
February 8, 2012
Ever since Congress passed the Food Stamp Act nearly a half century ago, that federal hunger-relief program has periodically become a political target. Over the past decade, the nation's food stamp program has more than doubled in size. This year, the program has become a part of the presidential contest.
Walker’s Appeal excoriated “whites” and, indeed “Christian America” for its inhumanity and hypocrisy. Over the long sweep of immutable racial history, Walker traces two essences. He traced the dicotomy between blacks (ancient Egyptians) and whites that lay in white people, cradled in bloody, deceitful ancient Greece. Racial traits within these opposites never change. Walker posited:
The whites have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avarous and blood-thirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority.—We view them all over the confederacy of Greece, where they were first known to be anything, (in consequence of education) we see them there, cutting each other’s throats—trying to subject each other to wretchedness and misery—to effect which, they used all kinds of deceitful, unfair, and unmerciful means. We view them next in Rome, where the spirit of tyranny and deceit raged still higher. We view them in Gaul, Spain, and Britian.—In fine, we view them all over Europe, together with what were scattered about in Asia and Africa, as heathens, and we see them acting more like devils than accountable men.
Murder, Walker concludes, remains the central feature of whiteness, though a sliver of hope for their future might reside in the American heritage of freedom—he ends by quoting the Declaration of Independence, which he exempts from white Americans’ wickedness. The English, for instance, had surmounted their history, turned their backs on slaving, and offered black people the hand of friendship. Once the English stopped oppressing the Irish, Walker opines, their regeneration would be complete.
At Bottom, David Walker’s Appeal speaks to “white Christians,” blaming, ridiculing, and threatening them with destruction in retribution for their mistreatment of blacks. Given white people’s moral and behavioral weaknesses, he wonders, coyly, just which is the inferior race:
“I, therefore, in the name and fear of the Lord and God of Heaven and of earth, divested of prejudice either on the side of my color or that of the whites, advance my suspicion of them whether they are as good by nature as we are or not.”
This is not to say that Walker was ready to boast about the slaves: as for black people, “we, (colored people of these United States of America) are the most wretched, degraded and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began.” He aimed pointed criticism at free northern blacks: “some of them can write a good hand, but who, notwithstanding their neat writing, may be almost as ignorant, in comparison, as a horse.” Walker discerns “a mean, servisle spirit” among the peol;e he calls “my color.” Only when black people organize and throw off the oppressor’s yoke will they “arise from this death-like apathy” and “be men [and women]!”
David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Peoples of the United States is just as relevant today as it was in 1830, only more so. The Republican candidates running for the Office of the President of the United States are as serious in their racialized rhetoric as Adolph Hitler was in his. African Americans have actions that must be performed, all legal and sanctioned by the United States Constitution. One is to register to vote, and the other is to arm yourself so that you will not be helpless as the Jews were under the Nazi Regime, because we are in “critical times hard to deal with.” The System must be challenged as David Walker and Malcom X did.
THE NEOCONS ARE BACK
ON POINT RADIO
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/02/08/economy
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2012
We are so ready for economic recovery. But doomsayers are still warning of doom, and soon. We’ll get that view, and the sunny side.
People wait in line during a job fair for Home Depot at the WorkSource Oregon Thursday, Feb. 2, 2012, in Tigard, Ore. (AP)
We just want it to be over – this bad economy meat grinder. And maybe it is, getting there. Better job numbers last week. Industrial production, up. Car sales, up. Real GDP, accelerating. Stock market, perking up a lot.
On the other hand… You’ve got economists out there who are still talking doom and doomer. The euro melting down. The Chinese housing market going belly up. Capitalism itself in some kind of structural death spiral. Riot and class war. Visions of apocalypse. Yikes.
This hour, On Point: doom versus boom – or at least some blossom – and what we’re up against.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests
Adam Davidson, co-founder and co-host of NPR’s Planet Money. He writes the “It’s the Economy” column for the New York Times. His latest column is It Is Safe To Resume Ignoring The Prophets of Doom…Right?
Brian Wesbury, chief economist for the First Trust financial services firm. He’s the author of It’s Not as Bad As You Think: Why Capitalism Trumps Fear and the Economy Will Thrive.
Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University. Senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
From Tom’s Reading List
The New York Times “Once the crisis hit, it became popular to scour the past for apocalyptic predictions that had come true. While many gloomy forecasts came from the left — notably Paul Krugman and Dean Baker — there was one particularly prescient voice from the right. As early as 2004, Peter Schiff, a libertarian investor, was arguing that the housing-fueled economic boom was a bubble waiting to burst. ”
Foreign Policy “Debt-ridden and hidebound, Europe may be on the verge of a painful breakup. America is still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis. Even China and India — the new engines of global growth — seem to be sputtering these days. Worse yet, the usual wonkish prescriptions don’t seem to be working anymore. So we asked 13 of the smartest people we know to give us their one out-of-the-box idea for fixing the global economy. Here’s what they recommend.”
NEOCONSERVATIVE FUTURE PLANS FOR THE 99% OF AMERICAN BOTH BLACK AND WHITE
Finding 'Life, Death And Hope' In A Mumbai Slum
Katherine Boo
February 8, 2012
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo spent more than three years in Mumbai's Annawadi slum to do research for her new book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Residents of the slum — which is located next to the Mumbai airport and in the shadow of several luxury hotels — live in devastating poverty.
IOWA PUBLIC RADIO
I like to stress the hypocrisy that passes as political discourse via Iowa Public Radio. I listen to my NPR affiliate’s local shows to test the social climate. What I notice and what has incensed me is that “liberal” Iowa does not seem to understand that the racist speech in the 2012 Presidential Debates began in rural Iowa with Rick Santorum. The participants in this so-called news hour is produced and broadcasted by the very same spirit of the clown that Stephen King writes about in IT.
Wednesday February 8, 2012
Politics Day
Join host Ben Kieffer as we talking about the U.S. closing its embassy in Syria this week amid growing violence there. What can or should the U.S. do? Also, new U.S. sanctions are imposed on Iran as tensions rise between that country and Israel. And, will GOP caucus results in Minnesota and Colorado show Mitt Romney remaining at the front of the pack? Ben’s guests are political scientists Jim McCormick of Iowa State University and Bruce Gronbeck of the University of Iowa.
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