Alan Keyes
Which race is truly victimized?
By Alan Keyes
Since the Zimmerman trial verdict, and especially on account of the Obama faction's efforts to pretend that it had something to do with racism, people have been remarking on the fact that racial divide in the United States has become much worse since Obama took over the White House. As is often the case these days, I find myself marveling at how long it takes people to see the obvious.
Soon after Obama took over the White House (Feb. 18, 2009, to be precise), I wrote an article for my blog pointing out how much of Obama's success depended on fomenting racial bad feelings:
"Because it so well served their purposes of self-advancement, the liberal black elite became adept at exploiting the fear of perceived racism so prevalent since the Civil Rights Movement's conquest of America's conscience in the 1960s.... In reaction against racial prejudice, the black elite unwittingly embraced race and racism as the defining preoccupation of the black American identity."
In speaking of Obama in particular, I would not be nearly so charitable now as I was when I wrote those words. Obama's abuse of the so-called "race card" isn't an unwitting surrender to an externally imposed conceptual stereotype of black Americans. He is ruthlessly squandering the moral capital of the black American heritage in pursuit of his communist ideological goals (in this case disarming the American people so that he and his elitist faction fellow travelers can impose their will without fear of potentially messy and embarrassing resistance).
There was nothing remotely racist about the Zimmerman case, until and unless we include the vitriolic racist rhetoric of the black liberals, or the vengeful violence that has been perpetrated against blameless whites attacked by mobs supposedly infuriated because Martin's "white" killer escaped punishment.
When the truth is known, it will be clear that these mobocratic protests were staged as part of the elitist faction push to discredit Second Amendment rights. It's really the elitist faction's media and their well-kept activists and politicos who are screaming. They're outraged because the Zimmerman jury refused to validate the scenario of irresponsible gun abuse that was to be used as the excuse for the next round of assaults on gun ownership in America.
Obama's ideological hatred of America drives him to hammer on the fault line of the nation's history of racial fear and loathing at every opportunity. He gets away with doing so because his putative opponents in the GOP don't have the inclination, or else the intelligent competence, to call him on it. Their deficiency partly results from the fact that they themselves have apparently never given a moment's thought to what should be said and done to assert the common heart of the American people in reaction against Obama's cold-blooded divisiveness.
The first step toward doing so would be to reject not only racism, but every way of approaching human affairs that treats people as material objects instead of human beings. But how can people who are themselves adamantly materialistic in their conception of politics call Obama to account for acting as if a material fact, the color of someone's skin, determines his humanity or lack thereof, not his qualities of spirit and goodwill? How can people who embrace, albeit with a different emphasis, the same ideology of pseudo-scientific materialism as Obama point out the way in which that ideology contradicts the American understanding of humanity and justice? They cannot admit that it renders him unfit for leadership in the American polity without tacitly admitting that they are similarly disabled.
The sadly tragic fact is that they all think human community is about nothing else than the distribution of physical goods and the structure of power that goes along with it. There is no place in their incongruous understanding of human society and politics for God's endowment of good conscience and will. By that endowment, He provides to each and every individual, regardless of material condition, the opportunity to prove beyond reasonable doubt the claim to equal dignity. By that endowment, the claim can be evaluated in terms of the use each individual makes of his distinctively human moral potential. Such are their moral choices and the character developed or destroyed as a result. In respect of this moral potential, all men are indeed created equal.
Treating Trayvon Martin as a victim and George Zimmerman as a criminal, without regard for this distinctively human (though not material) attribute of moral potential, discards the only basis on which the claim of intrinsic human equality can be sustained – which is a basis of equal moral responsibility. It turns out, then, that both Martin and Zimmerman are the victims of discrimination, but the race that is the target is not the black race or the white race, but the human race. For once we discard the moral premise of human equality, the material divide between one individual or group and another can seem so great that, on one side and the other, the sense of their common humanity disappears.
To understand this it is enough to remember what the French nobles, in their insouciant pride, did to the "common people" before the Revolution; and what the people, in their vengeful triumph, did to the nobles in its aftermath. Thanks to the wisdom of America's founding, the United States avoided the pretense that such grisly scenes of inhumanity have something to do with justice. But for how much longer, now that we seem intent on abandoning that wisdom?
July 29, 2013
Since the Zimmerman trial verdict, and especially on account of the Obama faction's efforts to pretend that it had something to do with racism, people have been remarking on the fact that racial divide in the United States has become much worse since Obama took over the White House. As is often the case these days, I find myself marveling at how long it takes people to see the obvious.
Soon after Obama took over the White House (Feb. 18, 2009, to be precise), I wrote an article for my blog pointing out how much of Obama's success depended on fomenting racial bad feelings:
"Because it so well served their purposes of self-advancement, the liberal black elite became adept at exploiting the fear of perceived racism so prevalent since the Civil Rights Movement's conquest of America's conscience in the 1960s.... In reaction against racial prejudice, the black elite unwittingly embraced race and racism as the defining preoccupation of the black American identity."
In speaking of Obama in particular, I would not be nearly so charitable now as I was when I wrote those words. Obama's abuse of the so-called "race card" isn't an unwitting surrender to an externally imposed conceptual stereotype of black Americans. He is ruthlessly squandering the moral capital of the black American heritage in pursuit of his communist ideological goals (in this case disarming the American people so that he and his elitist faction fellow travelers can impose their will without fear of potentially messy and embarrassing resistance).
There was nothing remotely racist about the Zimmerman case, until and unless we include the vitriolic racist rhetoric of the black liberals, or the vengeful violence that has been perpetrated against blameless whites attacked by mobs supposedly infuriated because Martin's "white" killer escaped punishment.
When the truth is known, it will be clear that these mobocratic protests were staged as part of the elitist faction push to discredit Second Amendment rights. It's really the elitist faction's media and their well-kept activists and politicos who are screaming. They're outraged because the Zimmerman jury refused to validate the scenario of irresponsible gun abuse that was to be used as the excuse for the next round of assaults on gun ownership in America.
Obama's ideological hatred of America drives him to hammer on the fault line of the nation's history of racial fear and loathing at every opportunity. He gets away with doing so because his putative opponents in the GOP don't have the inclination, or else the intelligent competence, to call him on it. Their deficiency partly results from the fact that they themselves have apparently never given a moment's thought to what should be said and done to assert the common heart of the American people in reaction against Obama's cold-blooded divisiveness.
The first step toward doing so would be to reject not only racism, but every way of approaching human affairs that treats people as material objects instead of human beings. But how can people who are themselves adamantly materialistic in their conception of politics call Obama to account for acting as if a material fact, the color of someone's skin, determines his humanity or lack thereof, not his qualities of spirit and goodwill? How can people who embrace, albeit with a different emphasis, the same ideology of pseudo-scientific materialism as Obama point out the way in which that ideology contradicts the American understanding of humanity and justice? They cannot admit that it renders him unfit for leadership in the American polity without tacitly admitting that they are similarly disabled.
The sadly tragic fact is that they all think human community is about nothing else than the distribution of physical goods and the structure of power that goes along with it. There is no place in their incongruous understanding of human society and politics for God's endowment of good conscience and will. By that endowment, He provides to each and every individual, regardless of material condition, the opportunity to prove beyond reasonable doubt the claim to equal dignity. By that endowment, the claim can be evaluated in terms of the use each individual makes of his distinctively human moral potential. Such are their moral choices and the character developed or destroyed as a result. In respect of this moral potential, all men are indeed created equal.
Treating Trayvon Martin as a victim and George Zimmerman as a criminal, without regard for this distinctively human (though not material) attribute of moral potential, discards the only basis on which the claim of intrinsic human equality can be sustained – which is a basis of equal moral responsibility. It turns out, then, that both Martin and Zimmerman are the victims of discrimination, but the race that is the target is not the black race or the white race, but the human race. For once we discard the moral premise of human equality, the material divide between one individual or group and another can seem so great that, on one side and the other, the sense of their common humanity disappears.
To understand this it is enough to remember what the French nobles, in their insouciant pride, did to the "common people" before the Revolution; and what the people, in their vengeful triumph, did to the nobles in its aftermath. Thanks to the wisdom of America's founding, the United States avoided the pretense that such grisly scenes of inhumanity have something to do with justice. But for how much longer, now that we seem intent on abandoning that wisdom?
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.)
