Alan Keyes
Should Black Americans say No to both Romney and Obama?
By Alan Keyes
The most tragically appalling thing about the choice the elitist faction has contrived for this election year is that both the Democratic and Republican candidates for President deeply betray the core constituency they are presuming to represent. I thought of this some time ago as I read about the pastors, black American Christians, who see go good choice for black American Christians in this year's Presidential election.
Obama is supposed to represent an historic breakthrough for Black Americans. Unlike Colin Powell, however, I could never buy into the lie that justified a vote for Obama on grounds of racial pride. To me, that involves accepting "the degrading premise of racism." In one of the very first posts on this blog, written a few days after Obama's inauguration, I explained myself this way:
Thanks to my upbringing, I grasped the truth of human equality before God before I consciously knew anything about it. In my parent's house as a young child, I learned the right principle of racial pride, which is that we should try to behave so that in God's eyes our actions bring no blame upon our race. And that meant, first of all, the human race.
It was on account of that principle that what I read as a youth about the enslavement of my ancestors seemed so grievously wrong. Unlike some black Americans I've encountered, I did not feel ashamed of the enslaved, however much the world invited me to do so. Rather, I felt the shame and degradation which their enslavers brought upon all who bear the name of humanity. It was the same bitter remorse I would feel as a college student when I first read deeply into the inhuman atrocities Hitler's Nazi "übermenschen" committed against the Jews and other people.
Back in the 1990's, I wrote a book about the moral and spiritual basis of the Black American identity (Masters of the Dream). The research I did at the time deeply confirmed what I knew from my own experience about the essential contribution of Biblical Christianity to the Black American identity. Black Americans like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King appealed to Americans to take responsibility for the wrong done by slavery or racist segregation. They did so because they could at first hand articulate the physical and moral anguish it caused. But at the end of the day, I realized that they were able to do so successfully because they articulated the responsibility they themselves felt on behalf of the God-endowed conscience of all humanity.
I have always been deeply moved by the eloquence of such Black American leaders. I have never been impressed by the supposed eloquence of people like Barack Obama. They know how to give voice to the natural anger and resentment felt by the victims of injustice. But apparently they do not know, and therefore cannot express, the crushing sorrow and deep remorse the God- inscribed heart must feel as it takes responsibility for the self-inflicted degradation of the perpetrators of injustice.
It has long been the deep conviction of my heart that this crushing burden is the essence of Christ's ultimate anguish as he hangs upon the Cross. He was wholly innocent, but yet and still he felt the abysmal, utter emptiness of those whose transformation by evil leaves them in the end bereft of every feeling except the self-rejection that arises from their own God-endowed hearts and consciences.
That stunted adolescent poet of human vanity, Friedrich Nietzsche (famous for the now wholly trite, but always less than simply true saying, "What does not destroy me makes me stronger") expressed an Ayn Rand-like hatred for Christianity. He could not appreciate the God-ness inherent in Christ's willing capacity to answer for the more than savage depths of human depravity, even though Christ himself was intrinsically innocent of all blame.
Such is the essence of that forgiveness of which only God is capable. Such is the nature of the true Super-man. He is far superior to Nietzsche's creative destroyer of worlds, who boldly fancies himself beyond good and evil, yet is too great a coward to face God as he answers for the worst of human evils. The problem with Nietzsche's übermensch is that he cannot be, at one and the same time, truly God and truly man. Christ is the man of courage in whom these truths converge. He is the only path that leads humanity through and beyond itself, yet always to itself again. That is because, in his very being (which he offers to share with us) he overcomes the hard distinction between what we long to become and what we nonetheless can never cease to be.
But I forget myself. If you've read this far, you're wondering how this thread weaves its way back to America's choice-less choice in this election year. The answer is simply this. We are given a choice in this election year that on one side comes through Marx and Lenin (Obama); and on other through Nietzsche and Ayn Rand (Romney). Both of them lead to the place in human history where Hitler meets with Stalin. We should have learned from our hindsight of their twentieth-century meeting that, even as it took place, both of them were already lost. How can it be that in the country most responsible for defeating them both, we now refuse to learn from their (anti-Christian) history. We must reject them both, or else, like them, we are already lost. And by we, I mean all of us, black, white, and every shade between — any and all who are willing to meet upon the way that joins all colors in one light, yet leaves each one, in Godly sight, clearly distinct, forever.
[Will you say no to Obama? Will you say no to Romney? Will you say no to socialism, whatever party label it wears? Will you join in giving an unmistakable, visible political mandate to the GOP "Platform Republicans"? If you will consider the "Platform Republican" voter strategy for the 2012 election, just send me an email at alan@loyaltoliberty.com. Put "Yes I will" in the subject line. No further message is needed. Of course, your additional thoughts and suggestions will be welcomed. As the implementation of this approach develops, I'll send email updates to the reply address you use. Also, please share this idea with others so they can consider it for themselves.]
October 4, 2012
The most tragically appalling thing about the choice the elitist faction has contrived for this election year is that both the Democratic and Republican candidates for President deeply betray the core constituency they are presuming to represent. I thought of this some time ago as I read about the pastors, black American Christians, who see go good choice for black American Christians in this year's Presidential election.
Obama is supposed to represent an historic breakthrough for Black Americans. Unlike Colin Powell, however, I could never buy into the lie that justified a vote for Obama on grounds of racial pride. To me, that involves accepting "the degrading premise of racism." In one of the very first posts on this blog, written a few days after Obama's inauguration, I explained myself this way:
-
I ...feel terrible grief at the sight of so many [Black Americans] who rejoice in the triumph of evil that Obama represents because they have been deceived and manipulated into believing that he somehow represents a vindication of all the years of suffering, sorrow, and outcast oppression experienced by Americans whose heritage includes the bitter reality of slavery, abuse, and unjust discrimination. How can the generations beaten, hounded, and murdered on account of the rejection of God-ordained human equality be vindicated by the elevation to power of a man who champions that rejection, not just for one group or another, but for all human beings too young and inarticulate to defend themselves? How can the generations denied opportunity and a just recompense for their talent and labor be vindicated by the adulation given to a man who promotes as lawful, and would impose by law, the ultimate denial of opportunity and all justice to the posterity which represents the renewal of mankind's hope in this and every generation?
Thanks to my upbringing, I grasped the truth of human equality before God before I consciously knew anything about it. In my parent's house as a young child, I learned the right principle of racial pride, which is that we should try to behave so that in God's eyes our actions bring no blame upon our race. And that meant, first of all, the human race.
It was on account of that principle that what I read as a youth about the enslavement of my ancestors seemed so grievously wrong. Unlike some black Americans I've encountered, I did not feel ashamed of the enslaved, however much the world invited me to do so. Rather, I felt the shame and degradation which their enslavers brought upon all who bear the name of humanity. It was the same bitter remorse I would feel as a college student when I first read deeply into the inhuman atrocities Hitler's Nazi "übermenschen" committed against the Jews and other people.
Back in the 1990's, I wrote a book about the moral and spiritual basis of the Black American identity (Masters of the Dream). The research I did at the time deeply confirmed what I knew from my own experience about the essential contribution of Biblical Christianity to the Black American identity. Black Americans like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King appealed to Americans to take responsibility for the wrong done by slavery or racist segregation. They did so because they could at first hand articulate the physical and moral anguish it caused. But at the end of the day, I realized that they were able to do so successfully because they articulated the responsibility they themselves felt on behalf of the God-endowed conscience of all humanity.
I have always been deeply moved by the eloquence of such Black American leaders. I have never been impressed by the supposed eloquence of people like Barack Obama. They know how to give voice to the natural anger and resentment felt by the victims of injustice. But apparently they do not know, and therefore cannot express, the crushing sorrow and deep remorse the God- inscribed heart must feel as it takes responsibility for the self-inflicted degradation of the perpetrators of injustice.
It has long been the deep conviction of my heart that this crushing burden is the essence of Christ's ultimate anguish as he hangs upon the Cross. He was wholly innocent, but yet and still he felt the abysmal, utter emptiness of those whose transformation by evil leaves them in the end bereft of every feeling except the self-rejection that arises from their own God-endowed hearts and consciences.
That stunted adolescent poet of human vanity, Friedrich Nietzsche (famous for the now wholly trite, but always less than simply true saying, "What does not destroy me makes me stronger") expressed an Ayn Rand-like hatred for Christianity. He could not appreciate the God-ness inherent in Christ's willing capacity to answer for the more than savage depths of human depravity, even though Christ himself was intrinsically innocent of all blame.
Such is the essence of that forgiveness of which only God is capable. Such is the nature of the true Super-man. He is far superior to Nietzsche's creative destroyer of worlds, who boldly fancies himself beyond good and evil, yet is too great a coward to face God as he answers for the worst of human evils. The problem with Nietzsche's übermensch is that he cannot be, at one and the same time, truly God and truly man. Christ is the man of courage in whom these truths converge. He is the only path that leads humanity through and beyond itself, yet always to itself again. That is because, in his very being (which he offers to share with us) he overcomes the hard distinction between what we long to become and what we nonetheless can never cease to be.
But I forget myself. If you've read this far, you're wondering how this thread weaves its way back to America's choice-less choice in this election year. The answer is simply this. We are given a choice in this election year that on one side comes through Marx and Lenin (Obama); and on other through Nietzsche and Ayn Rand (Romney). Both of them lead to the place in human history where Hitler meets with Stalin. We should have learned from our hindsight of their twentieth-century meeting that, even as it took place, both of them were already lost. How can it be that in the country most responsible for defeating them both, we now refuse to learn from their (anti-Christian) history. We must reject them both, or else, like them, we are already lost. And by we, I mean all of us, black, white, and every shade between — any and all who are willing to meet upon the way that joins all colors in one light, yet leaves each one, in Godly sight, clearly distinct, forever.
[Will you say no to Obama? Will you say no to Romney? Will you say no to socialism, whatever party label it wears? Will you join in giving an unmistakable, visible political mandate to the GOP "Platform Republicans"? If you will consider the "Platform Republican" voter strategy for the 2012 election, just send me an email at alan@loyaltoliberty.com. Put "Yes I will" in the subject line. No further message is needed. Of course, your additional thoughts and suggestions will be welcomed. As the implementation of this approach develops, I'll send email updates to the reply address you use. Also, please share this idea with others so they can consider it for themselves.]
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
