Today, I wrote letters to our North Carolina state senators, asking them to vote in favor of H.B. 324, which, as I understand it, will prevent the teaching of Critical Race Theory in NC public schools.
This is what I wrote:
Hello Senate Pro Tempore Berger,
I’m writing to please ask you to vote in favor of H.B. 324, which, as I understand it, will prevent the teaching of Critical Race Theory in NC public schools.
We can’t undo past discrimination by instituting policies that teach more (and new types of) discrimination.
By emphasizing Critical Race Theory in public schools and teaching it to our children, teachers, administrators, the school system, and yes, government as well will be indoctrinating young minds to focus on race, on skin color, rather than what is most important – seeing one another as equal human beings. We’re talking about children whose brains are not yet fully developed and who are especially vulnerable and susceptible to what is taught to them. Social values should be left to the parents. Schools and teachers must never be allowed to take the place of a child’s family, parents, and perhaps even his or her religion.
My great fear is that this new racist doctrine of Critical Race will result in a resurrection of racism where it hasn’t existed for many years.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.
And Nelson Mandela said: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate (or be taught to hate), and if they can learn (or be taught) to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Thomas Sowell wrote: “The past is a great unchangeable fact. Nothing is going to undo its sufferings and injustices, whatever their magnitude…. Neither the sins nor the sufferings of those now dead are within our power to change. Being honest and honorable with the people living in our own time is more than enough of a moral challenge, without having to indulge in illusions about rewriting moral history with numbers and categories.”
And finally, in the Supreme Court case Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. 1 (2007), Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Instead of teaching such hateful policies as Critical Race, why can’t our schools emphasize The Golden Rule, which is much more in line with what great men (not race-baiters) have said about righting the wrongs of our country…. be peaceful, loving, and judge one another on the content of one’s character and not the color of his or her skin.
I know at heart you fall on the right side of this issue, but I wanted to go ahead and send you my heartfelt views and concerns on this issue.
Summing up, I hope the NC Senate will do the right thing for its young citizens and pass this bill. Schools are for education, not indoctrination,
Many years ago, when my children were in elementary and intermediate schools, I saw something that troubled me so much that it has continued to stick in my mind. I went to Wintergreen Elementary School to have lunch with my son (he was a shy one) and when I walked in and signed in, I had to wait at the office area while the first grade classes made their way, single-file, down the hall to the cafeteria. The teachers led the way and chaperoned their classes as they walked to lunch. There was one little girl, a black girl, poorly-dressed, clearly not getting enough attention at home (or maybe simply from a very poor family), walking with her head down. She looked like she was abused and used to being abused. And sure enough, her teacher, her white teacher, was standing next to her, in a bullying type manner. The teacher’s body language, as well as the young girl’s, told me that that the teacher was being unprofessionally harsh to her. She was scolding the poor child for some reason or another and told to “walk faster.” In short, she was being treated as if she was nothing more than a nuisance, of less worth than the other students.
My heart broke. I felt so sorry for the little girl. Was this a case of discrimination? Was I witnessing my first instance of racial discrimination? I couldn’t be sure. All I know is that a teacher should never treat a down-trodden child, no matter what his or her color, as a human being of lesser value.
I waited by the office area for my son’s class to make their way to the cafeteria so I could walk with him. When we finally got into the cafeteria, I looked for that little black girl to make sure she had a decent lunch. I spotted her, with her head still down, at her table and it looked like she had a suitable lunch.
The sight of that poor humiliated little girl has forever stuck in my mind.
The second instance of racial discrimination occurred this year and very close to home. About three-four months ago, a neighbor three doors away saw a black man walking in our development and for no other reason than that, she called the police. She told the police that he didn’t belong and “looked suspicious.” First of all, he did not “look suspicious.” He was not breaking any laws. He was simply trying to talk to homeowners about the “Good Word.” My neighbor acted out with what I can only conclude was racial animus. The police came and “talked to” the young man. No doubt, he felt humiliated, And if he hadn’t felt the sting of racial discrimination before, he certainly felt it that day for sure. I felt so bad for the young man, as any decent human being would. Luckily, the residents of our all-white development race-shamed her. As the scenario played itself out, she and her husband sold their house and moved away about two months ago. Good riddance.
This brings me to the topic of this article….. Discrimination. And not just racial discrimination…..
As we all know, discrimination is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of people and groups based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity (nationality), gender, age or sexual orientation. In other words, it is based on unfair and invidious stereotypes. Nelson Mandela once said this of race-based discrimination: “Racism is a blight on the human conscience. The idea that any people can be inferior to another, to the point where those who consider themselves superior define and treat the rest as subhuman, denies the humanity even of those who elevate themselves to the status of gods.”
Discrimination strikes at the very heart of being human. It gives a view of one’s heart. A person either has a Christian heart (a good heart) or a black heart. Anyone who thinks another person is of less worthy as a human being because of race, ethnicity, gender, age, or sexual orientation is harboring a sickness in their heart and in their mind. Discrimination harms someone’s rights simply because of who they are, what characteristics they were born with (inherent traits, unchangeable) or what they believe. Discrimination is harmful and confers a sense of inferiority on another. It is also extremely humiliating.
We all have the right to be treated equally, regardless of our race, ethnicity, nationality, class, caste, religion, belief, sex, gender, language, sexual orientation, age, health, or other status. Yet all too often we hear heartbreaking stories of people who suffer economically, psychologically and legally for no other reason than they think or act or believe “differently” from those who are in a position of power over them. We also hear heartbreaking stories of persons who discriminate against others in their ordinary course of living. I call it “random acts of hatred.”
Acts of discrimination may not bother others, but it bothers me greatly. So far in my life, thankfully, I’ve only witnessed, first-hand, two acts of racial discrimination. Additionally, I’ve witnessed “different treatment” of fellow Italians back in my home state of New Jersey. Background checks, for example, included a deep dive into connections to mobsters or mob families.
I’d like to make clear that there is no copyright on discrimination and oppression. Almost every ethnic group, (religious group, immigrant group, sexual preference group, etc) has experienced discrimination at some point in our nation’s history… some more than others. The black race specifically has suffered the greatest amount of discrimination – for almost 200 years, from the years of slavery and then the segregation laws (Jim Crow era), through to the Civil Rights era of the 1960’s. And almost every group has their bad element, which unfortunately tends to give a bad name to the whole group. It’s the basis of profiling and subconsciously, it forms the basis of a lot of our judgements and decision-making. I’m Italian. We have the mafia, crime syndicates, extortion schemes, hitmen. I can’t help that. I have no such characters in my family or in my circle of friends. But yet the first question that people will ask when they hear my name (Rufino) is this: “Do you have any mobsters in your family?” Or “Have you ever met a mobster?” Was there a mob presence in the town I grew up in (northern New Jersey)? Yes there was. A friend of mine, Debbie, who lived a few blocks away had to live with the sight of seeing her father dead in their garage. He was gunned down, mob style (kneeling down and shot in the back of the head). And my sister’s friend, Johnna, had her family swimming pool dug up to look for Jimmy Hoffa’s body. I understood the stereotype of my people. I lived with it.
Other ethnic groups have done the same.
For example, the Irish were treated for many years as undesirables. They came to America in large numbers between the years 1820 and 1930. It’s estimated that as many as 4.5 million Irish arrived in America between those years. Between 1820 and 1860 alone, the Irish constituted over one third of all immigrants to this country. In the 1840s, they comprised nearly half of all immigrants. The Irish were called “Micks,” which was a disparaging term. The name stuck because many of their last names had ‘Mc’ or ‘Mac’ in it, which roughly translates as “son of/daughter of.” In the mid-19th century, Irish immigrants were discriminated against in employment and in other areas as well. They were met with signs and ads that read: “No Irish need apply” or some other message to that effect.
When the Italians followed suit and came to America, they were treated just as bad, if not worse. Italians immigrated to America in two waves – the first wave starting in the 1880s, and the second wave in the early 1900’s (when Italy suffered its great depression). Italian migration grew steadily up until 1921 when Congress passed a law (The Immigration Act of 1921) to restrict immigration (severe restrictions included those on Italians and other ethnicities). About 80% of Italian immigrants were from the impoverished south of Italy or from Sicily. Only about 50% were literate and most were men. For the most part, these were men came to this country looking for work, hoping to make enough money to go home and buy their own farm.
Italians were called such derogatory names as “guineas,” “dagos,” or “whops.” They were called “guineas” to insinuate that their tan skin meant they were related to Africans.
They too were met with signs and ads that read: “No Italians need apply” or some other variation of that theme. They faced other types of discrimination – in housing and in the criminal justice system. They were often victims of police brutality.
Violence was perpetrated on them in other ways as well, for no other reason than they were of the Italian race. On March 14, 1891 one of the worst mass lynchings in US history occurred, in downtown New Orleans. Eleven men were hung or shot to death by a mob seeking ‘justice’ for a murdered policeman. The victims were all Italians. And that wasn’t an isolated case. All five Italians living in Tallulah, Louisiana, were lynched in 1899 after a disagreement over a goat. In all, there were about 50 lynchings of Italians in the period from 1890 to 1920.
In a 2015 article by Chris Woolf (“A Brief History of America’s Hostility to a Previous Generation of Mediterranean Migrants — Italians,”), he highlighted an editorial in The New York Times, which included this description of Italians: “These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins, who have transported to this country the lawless passions, the cut-throat practices, and the oath-bound societies of their native country, are to us a pest without mitigation. Our own rattlesnakes are as good citizens as they… Lynch law was the only course open to the people of New Orleans to stay the issue of a new license to the Mafia to continue its bloody practices.”
Italian immigrants have been portrayed in other media outlets as ignorant, lazy, greasy, prone to crime, ignorant of the law, ignorant of democracy, and prone to addressing wrongs with personal vendettas and acts of violence. There is one scene in The Untouchables (with Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Andy Garcia as the Italian character) where Sean Connery’s character, Malone, says to Andy Garcia’s character, Stone: “You’re a lying member of a no-good race.”
My best friend growing up in East Rutherford, NJ, was a girl named Donna Lynch. She lived about 3 blocks away from me. She was full Irish. Her father and my father, a second-generation Italian, got on famously. Whenever Mr. Lynch saw my father, he would say call him: “You gineau.” And my father would greet him with “You dirty mick.” It always a light-hearted tribute to the stereotypes of both nationality groups and Donna and I would laugh.
While it may have taken a long time for Italians to assimilate into American culture, they have more than proven their love and appreciation for this country. They served heroically in America’s wars – World War I and World War II. In fact, in WWI, “Italians made up an estimated 12 percent of the men who joined the US military — despite being a much smaller proportion of the population.” Italians showed their patriotism and devotion to service during the attacks of 9/11. A good proportion of the firefighters and rescue workers who rushed into the burning and crumbling NYC Twin Towers were Italian.
As Mr. Woolf concluded in his article: “Today it’s hard to imagine America without the Knights of Columbus, the Sons of Italy, and of course, pizza.”
Jews have been discriminated again, individuals from the Middle East have been discriminated against (even before 9/11, refer to the Immigration Act of 1921), Poles have been discriminated against, Catholics have been discriminated against, and so on and so on.
Perhaps no one group was treated worse than the Chinese. From 1863 and 1869, between 15,000-20,000 were “hired” to help build the transcontinental railroad. They were paid less than American workers and lived in tents, while white workers were given accommodation in train cars. When they dropped due to exhaustion and died, no one cared. They were expendable. As if that wasn’t bad enough, The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to the United States and for Chinese nationals already in the country to ever become US citizens. It was the first time that an ethnic group was singled out by name as being undesirable. Historians report that there was “horrific violence” against them. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first in a long time of acts targeting the Chinese for exclusion in the US population. (The law remained in place for more than 60 years).
And then there are the African-Americans… the people who suffered the most. Ironically, they were valued much more than the Chinese (and perhaps other races as well) because they were chattel (= property, slaves), capable of an economic benefit for their owner. They were workers, servants, cooks, nannies, etc. But while the stigma of belonging to another human being, of being a slave, of being treated as if the only worth that the person with black skin has is in service to another was not unconscionable enough, the US Supreme Court handed down a most egregious judgement. Chief Justice Roger Taney, in the infamous Dred Scott case (1856), ruled that “a negro, whose ancestors were imported into the US, and sold as slaves,” whether enslaved or ultimately freed, were not citizens of the United States. According to his majority opinion, African-Americans were “beings of an inferior order. so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
Taney asked the question: “Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guaranteed by that instrument to the citizen? One of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.” He concluded that negroes were never intended to be and could not be citizens of the United States. As Taney explained: “The words ‘people of the United States’ and ‘citizens’ are synonymous terms and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the ‘sovereign people,’ and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.”
The question of citizenship having been decided, Taney concluded that the Court lacked jurisdiction and dismissed the case on procedural grounds. Taney further held that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional and foreclose Congress from freeing slaves within Federal territories. The opinion showed deference to the Missouri courts, which held that moving to a free state did not render Scott emancipated. Finally, Taney ruled that slaves were property under the Fifth Amendment, and that any law that would deprive a slave owner of that property was unconstitutional. In other words, the Supreme Court upheld slavery and further held that persons of African descent could never be American citizens.
Luckily and thankfully, the stinging ruling of Justice Taney was rendered null and void by the 13th Amendment, which was passed 12 years later on December 6, 1865. The Fourteenth Amendment, an amendment codifying the Civil Rights Act of 1865, was ratified in 1868.
What followed then was a further insult to African-Americans, which was the era of the Jim Crow laws in the South, which lasted until the 1950’s. Parts of the South also refused to enforce the ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education ruling (1954) which prohibited de jure (“by law”) segregation in public schools. Martin Luther King Jr. described those years this way: “Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.”
They say discrimination against African-Americans (referred to as “negroes” and “blacks”) is predominant in the South; they call it “racism.” There is a long history of relations between whites and blacks in the southern states (the Northern states were simply “anti-black”). During the years of slavery, despite the talking points from the left, groups like BLM, proponents of Critical Race Theory (and Race Theory in general), and the rhetoric from poverty pimps such as Reverend Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Rep. Maxine Waters, and other such race-baiters, for the most part, there was a good relationship between slaves, and blacks in general, and whites. In many cases, slaves were treated as members of the family. Their children played and grew up together. They got good physician and dental care. When slavery was abolished, many former slave owners gave their former slaves a plot of land, some farm animals, etc. During the War of Northern Aggression, Lincoln hoped for slave insurrection (violence against the wives and children of their slave owners, therefore causing Confederate soldiers to desert the southern army and rush back home to their families to protect them. (Nothing of the sort happened; instead, the slaves remained loyal and even felt a sense of duty to protect the families). But then something changed after the War. It was called The Republican Party and the Reconstruction Acts (acts of punishment; retribution).
The way I see how the relationship between blacks and whites deteriorated has everything to do with Abraham Lincoln’s decision to use slaves as a pawn in his game of “waging war to subjugate the South back into the Union.” When the government sought to prohibit slavery after the War, with the 13th Amendment, it did so under the political agenda of the Republican Party. (there is a whole history, not a good one, surrounding the Republican Party and its ambitions). After the War, there were two dominant parties – the Republican Party (dominant party in presidential elections) and the Democrats (the Southern Democrats being a more radical version). Of course, all the freed slaves associated with the Republican Party, the party of their liberation. And every Southern Democrat could count on that. Then, in order to punish the former Confederate states for not adopting the Fourteenth Amendment when it was first sent to them for ratification, Congress (without southern representation) passed the unconstitutional Reconstruction Acts, which organized the southern states into military districts, run by former Northern generals, and placed certain conditions on them in order to be re-admitted to the Union. Those conditions included ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment, altering their state constitutions to prohibit secession, and prohibiting all those who supported the Confederacy to vote or serve in government, including local government. Who were allowed to vote? Republicans. (ie, freed slaves). Republicans were responsible for the War; they were responsible for denying the South their independence. They were responsible for destroying their lifestyle, their farms, their cities and towns, their fortunes, their economy, their infrastructure, their means of income, and killing so many of their young men. So, in a matter of just a few years, the North managed to make enemies (political enemies) of the southern whites and the freed blacks. Blacks were all of a sudden seen as siding with “the enemy.” A relationship that was once friendly turned antagonistic. And that is why I believe the Jim Crow laws were enacted. The Southern Democrats were not going to sit back and accept the enormous social change that the North imposed on the South. Right or wrong, the South just wasn’t ready for a fully integrated society.
I understand why many blacks are bitter. Racial injustice was the black man’s burden and America’s shame. But I have such great respect for them for enduring so many years of hardship and discrimination and patiently (until the 1960’s) waiting for the law to catch up with their reconstruction amendments. Martin Luther King Jr. helped organize the black community to push for meaningful change, but he urged them to do it peacefully. He said: “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.” He also said: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”
Wise words indeed.
Martin Luther King’s leadership, his call for peaceful protests, and his march on Washington DC (on August 28, 1963) at which he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech helped sway the LBJ administration to pass the great package of civil rights legislation – the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It was certainly about time. I only wish it wasn’t necessary to have to pass laws to protect citizens from discrimination, especially when our founding document, the Declaration of Independence proudly and audaciously proclaims that in America “all men are created equal.”
I can’t speak to the discrimination of other races or ethnic groups, and I wouldn’t dare to do so. It’s not my place. I can only speak to the discrimination of my own race, the Italian race.
African-Americans have something in common – their skin is black. Mexicans and South Americans have something in common – their skin is brown. Indians (from India) have a distinctive skin color as well, as do the Chinese and Japanese.
We Americans whose skin just happens to be something other than black, brown, or “yellow” are lumped into the large group known as “whites.” That doesn’t really seem to be fair; it doesn’t really do us justice.
Yes, our skin is considered “white,” but I know full well that each “white person” has a distinct nationality (mother country), a distinct heritage (a history of their “people”), and distinct beliefs, customs, and values. For example, the history of my people is tied up with the Roman Empire, with the tales of the Caesars, with the pride all its ruins stir in us, with its government system and values and its family values, and its sense of loyalty to country. It also has its customs regarding religion, food, genuineness, and good-heartedness. Other nationality groups have their own history, unique customs, and values.
When Italians first came over to America, their skin was a bit darker – an olive color as it has been described. My family came over from Naples and northern Italy during the years 1900 – 1920 and settled in Jersey City, NJ. Italian immigrants tried to remain a closely-knit community (because culture was important to them) but by the 1950’s-1960’s, it was getting hard to do so. Other minorities moved in and changed their peaceful, family-orientated, clean existence. My family had to move away from both my mother’s sister and her large family and her brother and his larger family, and being apart from cousins and aunts and uncles has certainly been a regrettable part of my life.
I often get offended when Italians are lumped together with the British, Germans, Irish, French, Russians, Greeks, Polish, Swedish, etc. under the term “whites.” Again, we are not all the same and we certainly don’t share the same heritage, customs, or values. We celebrate Black History Month, but I never understood why, in our schools, we didn’t afford other ethnic groups the same benefit. How wonderful it would be for all school children to learn about the history and culture, in detail, of all the different races and ethnic groups. I would never consider myself an “Italian-American.” I’m simply an American. The United States is my home, not Italy. I’m sure other ethnic groups feel the same way. But we sure would feel respected if our mother country and culture could be shared with others. Diversity today focuses so heavily on such a concept, but only for certain races and ethnic groups, such as African-Americans and Mexicans.
I think it’s important to understand the histories and cultures of the various groups that make up this amalgam known as “whites.” I think it’s also important to look at how these different groups value their own unique heritage and how they have dealt with past discrimination. And I think it’s also important to look at how each of these groups have assimilated into this country.
I read some commentary and letters written by members of various ethnic groups about past discrimination and they are telling. For example, Ms. Laura Compagni-Sabella, an Italian, wrote:
To the Editor (The New York Times):
I think that Brent Staples exaggerates the extent to which Americans viewed Italians through the lens of “racism.” There was plenty of skepticism and fear as millions of impoverished people — Italian and otherwise — poured into American cities. With them came crowding, crime, filth, disease, nondemocratic political ideas and social chaos. Urban places had not developed the physical and institutional infrastructure to accommodate this influx of needy people.
Yes, there were unfortunate events like the lynching in New Orleans (of 11 Italians) and plenty of condescension toward swarthy “dagos.” However, overall, American communities absorbed Italians, educated their children, provided jobs and supported their entrepreneurial efforts as small-business owners. The vast majority of Italian-Americans viewed these opportunities with gratitude, worked extremely hard and took meticulous care of their homes and families.
The results of their resilience are obvious today. As a descendant of these extraordinary people, I don’t buy your victim narrative. Italian-Americans were beneficiaries of America’s democratic capitalist system and pluralistic culture, not victims of it.
Laura Compagni-Sabella, Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y..
In a letter to the same newspaper, Mr. Gene Boccialetti, also Italian (obviously) wrote:
To the Editor:
What a short memory Americans have of their own immigrant experience. With very few exceptions, every family came here from somewhere else and went through, to one degree or another, some challenges, bumps and bruises on their way to becoming American. But it’s a bit like Snapchat, where their collective memories dissolve.
Without a trace of self-awareness, they just point at newcomers and shout: “We must raise the drawbridge! Keep them out! They are too different!” More than likely, someone (or many someones) was saying the same thing about them or their forebears when they came here.
America is — and always has been — a powerful, even irresistible idea that draws people to it. Understanding the meaning of America fully — and adjusting to it — takes some time. Freedoms are easier to grasp than responsibilities. Opportunities are more exciting and grab attention faster than do barriers and challenges. But, with some time and work, almost everyone “becomes” American and feels rewarded for the investment.
Gene Boccialetti, New York
Mr. Paul Leo appears to have some lingering trauma:
To the Editor:
Even as a third-generation half-Italian-American, I still feel a surge of nausea whenever faced with choosing an “ethnicity” on official forms or job applications. The only choice allowed for my mixed European heritage is “white,” but checking it feels like a betrayal of my ancestors and a forced whitewashing of this country’s true micro-diversity.
I resent, every time, that my identity will be assumed into a featureless, monolithic bloc of whiteness and ascribed to an established majority I neither identify with nor aspire to. And leaving the box unchecked in protest feels even worse, like choosing voluntary self-erasure over involuntary state erasure.
Paul Leo, New York
Mr. John Twomey, an Irishman from our very state of North Carolina, expressed his views:
To the Editor:
Both of my paternal grandparents were born in Ireland and emigrated to the United States around 1900. I remember their describing “Irish Need Not Apply” signs and being discriminated against in many ways. Their story is quite similar to what you have described for Italians.
As a country we have a very checkered history of our treatment of anyone not of British ancestry. Asians, Africans, South Americans, Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Irish, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Hindi — all were treated as inferiors at one time (most still are).
Only when the accents disappeared and it became impossible to tell that someone was Italian or Irish were we “accepted” as white. Unfortunately, many still fall under the label of “them” — inferior and to be feared.
President Trump has done a very effective job of bringing out into the open how deep and alive racism still is in America. For a “Christian” nation we fall quite short of the values that Christianity stands for; we have a lot of repair and repentance to do, a lot of forgiveness to be earned.
John Twomey, Raleigh, NC
And finally, Mr. Greenway helped bolster the original article on “The Bigotry Towards Italian Immigrants” by providing additional facts:
To the Editor:
Your article cites Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, but he was not alone in the prejudice against Italians from the south of Italy in the late 19th and early 20th century. His hated rival, Woodrow Wilson, wrote in his 1902 “History of the American People”: “Throughout the [19th] century men of the sturdy stock of the north of Europe had made up the main strain of foreign blood … but now there came the multitudes of men of the lowest classes from the south of Italy and men of the meaner sort out of Hungary and Poland, men out of the ranks where there was neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence … as if the countries of the south of Europe were disburdening themselves of the more sordid and hapless elements of their population.”
H.D.S. Greenway, Needham, Mass.
Again, in summation, there is no copyright on discrimination and oppression. What is important is how each group has overcome it. What is important is how each group has worked to assimilate and “fit in.” What is ultimately important is that each person, regardless of gender, skin color, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation is protected by the Constitution and by the laws of our country. What is important is that everyone understands that “All Men are Created Equal.”
I call on everyone, regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, gender to put issues of discrimination and racism aside and hold onto what is most important, the gems of American liberty and American equality. There are the great values that unify us. Unity must be the goal. Together we are stronger; together we are better.
“The Bigotrry Towards Italian Immigrants,” The New York Times (Opinion Letters), October 19, 2019. Referenced at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/19/opinion/letters/bigotry-italian-immigrants.html [Readers discuss an article about how darker-skinned southern Italians faced racism a century ago and had to struggle for acceptance.]
The Immigration Act of 1921 was the first federal law in U.S. history to limit the immigration of Europeans, the Immigration Act of 1921 reflected the growing American fear that people from southern and eastern European countries not only did not adapt well into American society but also threatened its very existence. The law specified that no more than 3 percent of the total number of immigrants from any specific country already living in the United States in 1910 could migrate to America during any year.
II. The Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. It completely excluded immigrants from Asia.
Friends, fellow parents, concerned Pitt County (NC) residents, please check out my friend Jerry McRoy’s excellent article on his newly-created blogsite “J Man’s Thoughts.” The article is titled “County Commissioners, Their Constituents, and Their Monuments.”
The article provides a wonderful overview of the Pitt County Confederate Soldiers Monument, a facially-neutral memorial which was dedicated to the community in 1914, in memory of those Confederate soldiers from Pitt County who gave their last full measure. A little over a year ago, on June 15, 2020. 7 of our 9 Pitt County Commissioners voted to remove it from its permanent location, which was in front of the Pitt County Courthouse, and have it eventually relocated. A Relocation Committee was formed to include members of the Pitt County Board and at least 3 civilian members, one of them being Jerry McRoy. During the middle of the night, on June 22-23, the monument was lifted off its foundation (by a crane secured by Sheriff Paula Dance), with pictures and video footage taken of the nefarious nocturnal action. The foundation was then demolished with a jackhammer (again at the instruction of Sheriff Dance). The monument was apparently put into storage, and yet, the County Commissioners have refused to let the public know where it is being stored.
Over one year later, the Commissioners still have not found a new (statutorily-required) replacement location for the monument and so it is still being held in storage. The removal, storage, and eventual relocation has been estimated to upwards of $100,000, to be borne by the taxpayers, of course.
To be clear, the 7 County Commissioners who voted hastily to remove the monument acted in violation of the law. The most flagrant violation involves General Statute G.S. § 100-2.1, “Protection of Monuments, Memorials, and Works of Art.” There are many requirements and conditions that apply to the potential removal of a “monument of remembrance,” which clearly the Confederate Soldiers Monument is, each of which has been ignored and /or violated by the 7 Commissioners.
Why do I say the monument is “facially-neutral”? I say this because the Confederate Soldiers Monument has the simple inscription: (on one side) “Dedicated to Our Confederate Dead” and “Erected by the People of Pitt County in Grateful Remembrance of the Courage and Fortitude of Her Confederate Soldiers,” And on the other side , the inscription reads: “Theirs was not to make reply, Theirs was not to reason why. Theirs was but to do and die.” It is clearly a monument reflecting an important period in our American and North Carolina history, as well as being a monument of remembrance. It makes no mention of slavery and makes no mention of the reason or reasons for the War of Northern Aggression. It is simply a statue memorializing those Confederate soldiers from Pitt County who died with honor and valor.
I’m sure most people here in Pitt County (and most likely the state in general) don’t know the circumstances of North Carolina’s secession and its joining the Confederacy. North Carolina resisted the secession movement. She did not want to secede. In her convention to take up the issue, most of its representatives flat-out refused to secede. 9 southern states had already seceded, with South Carolina being the first. Then Fort Sumter happened. It was a slimy scheme by President Lincoln to force South Carolina to fire upon northern ships (by the way, no one was killed) in order to give him the “crisis” he needed to wage war on the Confederate states. Lincoln then had a wire sent to the governor of the remaining southern states, including NC, demanding that they supply troops to join with the Army of the North to fight their neighbors. This was something that North Carolina could not do. In her view, the federal government was a common government (for the “benefit” of all states); it would never coerce one state to take up arms against another. That would be unconscionable. And so, NC’s governor John Ellis wrote back: “You will get no troops from North Carolina.” And that is when (and the only reason that) North Carolina seceded from the Union and joined with the Confederate States of America. [You can see and read Gov. Ellis’ actual letter here: https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p15012coll8/id/2441/ ]
A certain segment of Greenville would have you believe that this monument, which is honestly no different from any headstone in any cemetery, terrorizes them, intimidates them, dishonors them, is racist, reminds them of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, is a testament to white supremacy, and all the other “catch phrases” we hear to keep the racism narrative alive and well. (I can’t speak to racism because I’ve only seen one case of it in my entire life, but I know it is a product of the human heart – a dark and un-Christian heart, which is a product of human nature. No one can change that. But we need to remember that no one race has a copyright on discrimination. This country has treated almost all races at one point or another in a discriminant manner. The question was must ask is this: Are there laws to protect those who were previously discriminated against? The answer is YES. There most certainly are. In fact, the laws go above and beyond. Some have been passed, and policies instituted, for the purpose to remedy past discrimination.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”
And Nelson Mandela said: “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
We may not have been a perfect country when the Constitution was adopted. Try as they did and as they wished, abolishing slavery with the new union was not possible (thanks to Georgia and South Carolina). Forming a union of states for strength and security was more important than abolishing a sinful institution. But the most wonderful thing about the united States is that we became a “more perfect union” over the years because we had the most enlightening of values and the most inspiring of founding documents to begin with. Our collective story is a story of working towards our “more perfect union.”
But again, a certain segment of society chooses not to see things that way. They choose to point fingers and lay blame. A national sin does not continue to remain a national sin if it has been remedied. The remedy becomes the new story.
Racism is not found in a facially-neutral statue, a monument, or memorial. It stems from a darkened heart and a diseased mind. I resent those members of our community who impute a racist meaning to the monument and I resent them for characterizing it as a testament to white supremacy. Most of all, I resent those 7 County Commissioners (aka, “County Criminals,” aka “County Cowards,” aka “The Criminal Syndicate Known as the Pitt County Board of Commissioner”) for taking the low road, giving in to threats of potential violence (because that’s how certain groups express themselves), dishonoring those Confederate soldiers who died defending their homes and the state they loved, and dishonoring the grand legacy that North Carolina rightfully earned.
They missed a perfect opportunity to learn the truth about the War of Northern Aggression (aka, the War to Prevent Southern Independence, aka, The War Between the States, aka, the “Civil War,” which is the most unfitting term) and to impart that truth upon the uninformed citizens of Pitt County. There is honor in that truth. An issue that was meant to divide us along skin color could have turned into an opportunity to bring us together by reminding everyone of the righteous reasons for North Carolina’s secession and for her fighting against the North’s purely political agenda.
If this issue means anything to you, please get involved in holding the Pitt County Commissioners accountable and forcing them to put the monument back in its rightful place. History would implore you to act.
by Diane Rufino, August 14, 2021 (originally submitted and printed as a Letter to the Editor in 2008)
Since the terrorist attacks of September 2001, people have complained about how Homeland Security measures are burdening their fundamental rights. Yet every day I lock all my doors and windows in my house and cars and watch where I go. You see, crime has done more to burden my fundamental rights to life and liberty than anything the government has one. Take Greenville, for example: crime is up, juvenile crime is up, and the high school graduation rate is only 54 percent.
So who is responsible for the greater loss of fundamental freedom – terrorists or criminals? And who’s fault is this – the government’s or bad parents? It’s bad parents. Too many parents are not taking their responsibilities seriously and are passing the problems they create onto everyone else.
In my day, people recognized a basic principle: You don’t have a child if you can’t property raise one. And that means being married before having one, being financially secure, making sure the child finishes school, and instilling good family values. Where I come from, and where my relatives came from, we believe it is no one else’s job to raise children except the parents. And those were good days, with safe neighborhoods.
Already the dynamics in this country have changed. Too many people today are taking from society and not contributing. And too many think this acceptable. It’s not acceptable to me. I’m a taxpayer and the government is subsidizing bad behavior with my hard-earned money. What is going to happen in another 30 years if this mentality is allowed to continue? Will this country go bankrupt? Will people be held hostage by the fear of too many criminals living among them? Will all the professional jobs continue to be filled by foreigners devoted to education and a strong work ethic because American parents continue to de-emphasize these values to their children? Or are we going to continue to let parents have a free pass at raising criminals and ignorant young adults?
When I’m out in the pool, I usually bring Alexa outside with me to listen to my extensive Bruce Springsteen songlist. I especially look forward to his duet with Tom Morello on “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” It’s a real rocking version. I had never heard of Tom Morello before and so I looked him up. I learned that his is the lead guitarist for the group Rage Against the Machine.
I thought to myself: “What a great name for a band!” My instinct told that the name was a reference, a bold reference, to their protest against an aggressive, intrusive government. Indeed, their songs express political views which are, to a great extent, extreme and revolutionary.
A definition of “machine” comes from the highly entertaining movie (one of my all-time favorites!), 3 IDIOTS, where the ultra-competitive student explains that “a machine is anything that reduces human effort. … Anything that simplifies work, or saves time, is a machine.”
I think of the government as a machine. On the one hand, for the great many Americans who rely on government hand-outs to sustain them, the government certainly can be seen as machine as it “reduces human effort” in getting education, learning a skill, getting a job (and all that it entails), and providing for oneself. On the other hand, it can be seen as a machine in that it is capable of doing a great many tasks, in a centralized manner. The bottom line is that a large and aggressive government is seen (by those in DC, by career DC politicians, by “the swamp”) as an expedient. “It gets the job done.” Who believes that? Most times, as we have seen over the many years, government has become inexpedient. Ronald Reagan once said: “Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.”
As I have made clear in my article posted on January 23, titled “A Re-Declaration of Independence,” [https://forloveofgodandcountry.com/2021/01/23/a-re-declaration-of-independence/ ], government has exceedingly abused its powers under the Constitution and over the many years, has usurped many powers reserved historically to the States. (refer to the Tenth Amendment and James Madison’s commentary in The Federalist Papers No. 45). It continues to do so, becoming more abusive with each Democratic administration. I listed 47 examples of how the US federal government has become tyrannical and has not only been abusing its powers under the Constitution but creating assuming new powers as well, usurping them from the States and from you and I (the People), but I could have easily listed so many more.
The federal government has created an entitlement culture, it has expanded the welfare program (Reagan wisely commented: “Welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.”), it has taken over public education and healthcare (both of which are unconstitutional actions), it weaponizes its many agencies (mostly unconstitutional) to target political opponents (ex: Obama’s IRS and now Biden’s IRS), it uses taxpayer-funded bailouts to rescue failing banks and businesses (the ones IT deems are worthy, thereby destroying the free-market system and picking “winners and losers”), it refuses to enforce one of its primary responsibilities – that of controlling immigration at our borders, it puts the interests of illegal aliens ahead of honest, law-abiding, and decent American citizens, it (Obama, that is, using his “pen and phone”) passed DACA, an unconstitutional program (thereby usurping rightful powers that belonged to the legislative branch), it abuses its taxing and spending powers to wantonly and arbitrarily raise taxes in order to compensate illegal aliens, enlarge the entitlement system, send grants to the States (unconstitutional; with such grants, the government is able to do an “end run” around the Constitution), and bail out certain select banks and businesses, it has been using Homeland Security and the FISA courts to spy on ordinary American citizens, reporters, and even a presidential candidate (Trump), it has restructuring Social Security deductions so that they are no longer a “personal property right” but rather a government slush-fund (thanks to the Supreme Court), it uses its full power to attack gun rights and gun-rights groups for the purpose of enacting gun control and burdening our Second Amendment rights, it has used Homeland Security Department to issue a directive to all law-enforcement agencies identifying conservative individuals and groups (those who “cling to their guns and religion…”) as potential home-grown terrorists (see “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” April 7, 2009 – just 2 ½ months after Obama was inaugurated), it colludes with the lame-stream media to propagandize (“the mouthpiece of the Democrats”), it colludes with the lame-stream media and left-wing radical groups to shut down the free speech and free assembly rights of conservatives, it colludes with the lame-stream media to incite hatred and bullying of conservatives, patriots, veterans, and conservative groups, inciting and encouraging violence from radical groups (BLM, Antifa, etc) to further a political agenda, it continues to lie to the American people and spreads falsehoods (at the very minimum, it sends out only one-sided information and data, discrediting the other side as if it is omniscient – think JFK assassination, RFK assassination, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, Benghazi, Carter Page, the FISA warrants, “Trump and Russian Collusion,” global warming, etc), it has been working the American people up regarding the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, misleading them with incorrect and one-sided information concerning the rise in the number of cases and concerning the vaccines, shutting education, businesses, and travel down, causing many small (and large as well) businesses to go out of business and the loss of 20.6 million jobs (as of June 2020, with 7.7 million jobs providing healthcare benefits) resulting in an unemployment rate not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s, it has resurrected racism in this country where it hasn’t existed in many many years (implementing Critical Race Theory for example), and much more. And most recently, it has ignored (if not been complicit in) the massive voter fraud and election tampering in the 2020 presidential election that continues to be proven with each passing month, each audit, and each lawsuit filed.
Ask yourself: Are you happy with the government’s take-over of healthcare, even though it was unconstitutional in its undertaking and then unconstitutional in the manner Chief Justice John Roberts attempted to save it? If you were paying for your own health insurance, are you happy that your premiums have gone up substantially? Are you happy with the government’s handling of the COVID outbreak? Do you enjoy having to “mask up” everywhere you go?
Who looks at our current deranged and formerly racist president, deranged and vengeful House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the cabal of corrupted and corruptible politicians in DC and thinks: ‘Yes, I trust them to do more to control my life and raise my children?’ Well, we know which group of people is happy to watch as the leviathan in DC grows ever larger and ever stronger, and never ask such questions.
I, on the other hand, despise the syndicate in DC (“The criminal syndicate known as the government of the United States”). In the summer of 2009, I started a Tea Party group in my home county of Pitt in North Carolina and have been involved in running it and furthering its mission ever since. The Tea Party movement started, initially, as a fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party after CNBC report Rick Santelli called for a “tea party” from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on February 19, 2009 after some heated words about the federal bail-out program. Of course, the name refers to the famous Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, the first in a series of events that ultimately led to the colonies’ fight for independence (American Revolution)
Members of the movement called for lower taxes, for a reduction in the size and scope of government, for fiscal responsibility (ie, for reduced federal spending at home and abroad, for personal responsibility, for a strict separation of powers, for states’ rights (the power of the Tenth Amendment), and for free markets (unconstrained by government). In short, the movement stands for a smaller government of limited functions, as defined by the US Constitution and understood by the States when they ratified the unifying document.
I believe the motto of the Tea Party movement can be summed up by a famous quote by Henry David Thoeau: “Government is best when it governs least.”
The Tea Party movement is a grassroots movement to reign in the size and scope of the government. After all, the Declaration of Independence proclaims that it the inherent right of the people to do so. I see it as a duty.
Sadly, we’ve had far too many ambitious presidents and ambitious Congressmen, all too willing and eager to ignore the Constitution and anxious to grow the machine. They have done far too much damage. The greatest damage, in my opinion, was done by Abraham Lincoln in his deceitful plan to wage war against the Confederacy. He twisted and transformed the Constitution, and in doing so has left the lasting legacy that the inalienable and inherent rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence are no longer recognized. [The southern states, which gave our country the most intelligent and prolific of founding fathers, and which historically have been the most patriotic and loyal to the United States, just wanted to be left alone]. Democrats have historically and traditionally the party of big government and of animus to the Declaration and the Constitution (both which constrain their agenda). Conservatives have been the ones to at least make attempts to respect what our Founders gave us.
The last presidents to recognize constitutional limits and have acted to curb or curtail the growth of the federal government, or to even have downsized it were:
(1) George Washington – He was committed to over-seeing a limited federal government (except for signing a bill creating a National Bank)
(2) Thomas Jefferson – He was the author of the world-famous Declaration of Independence, arguably our most important and influential founding document. He eliminated taxes and otherwise was extremely fiscally conservative. He also fought the growing power of the judiciary.
(3) James Madison – He drafted the US Constitution (“father of the Constitution”) and the Bill of Rights. He used his veto power to reign in the legislative branch that desperately wanted to expand the power of the federal government.
(4) Martin Van Buren – He was dedicated to a limited federal government and used his veto power to reign in Congress.
(5) John Tyler – He believed that tariffs imposed by the federal government were unconstitutional and he strongly supported States’ Rights.
(6) Franklin Pierce – He respected States’ Rights and would not allow the federal government to encroach upon them.
(7) Grover Cleveland – He was known as the “last small government Democratic president.” He was anti-tax, anti- government tariff, and against an aggressive Congress (in fact, he used his veto power 414 times). He also refused to enlarge the influence of the US around the world (including Canada, Central America, and South America).
(8) William Howard Taft – He was perhaps the last president in American history to believe in the limited powers of the Chief Executive.
(9) Calvin Coolidge – He was a firm believer in the free market and believed the federal government should stay out of its way. He cut federal taxes by 50%, eliminated farm subsidies, and cut government spending by almost half.
(10) Ronald Reagan – One can truly say that he lived up to his famous quote that “government is the problem, not the solution.” He cut taxes, shaved budgets for non-military programs, historically forced the bankruptcy and then the downfall of Russia, reduced assistance to state and local governments, and implemented a massive down-sizing of government regulation and oversight.
(11) Donald Trump – He was called “the most pure conservative President ever” by New York Magazine. He pursued pro-business policies, significantly reduced unemployment, reduced taxes and government regulation, confronted NATO regarding its unfair financial burden on the US, re-negotiated and signed new and equitable trade deals with foreign countries, and in doing so, led to one of the greatest economic booms in American history. FACT. He also influenced the judiciary for generations to come by not only appointing 3 conservative justices to the Supreme Court but also appointing more than 200 judges to the federal benches.
In short, the federal government, over the years, has assumed greater and greater power to intrude upon our lives, to run our lives, to coerce our businesses, to unduly burden our inalienable and God-given rights, to burden our property, and to interfere with our “pursuit of happiness,” believing it is helping its citizens (by helping take care of us and thus “reducing human effort”), by relieving us of the God-given right of free will and of the freedom to “pursue happiness.” Why exercise one’s God-given rights, why work, why get an education when government will take care of you and provide all the essentials for you. But you then have to ask yourself: If government doesn’t trust you to exercise your freedom and liberty, then why do we need freedom and liberty at all? Why do we continue to use the phrase “The Land of the Free” when truthfully, we really aren’t free after all. We certainly can’t exercise all our rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” freely, as well as the rights and privileges guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Increasingly, government creates and endorses policies to make the poorer and non-working (but capable of work) members of society “more comfortable in their poverty” rather than to pursue policies that are aimed at eradicating poverty. (This is one of the many areas I have devote my attention and have come up with solutions). Why? Because the government has no real interest in eradicating poverty. Poverty makes for good politics. It is a political expedient for the Democatic Party; it’s the foundation of their political agenda. Ignoring its motivation, the government has been using its powers as a massive re-distribution of wealth scheme, siphoning money from the upper but mostly middle class to those it believes need subsidizing.
President Ronald Reagan once explained (July 1, 1975): “If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. If we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to ensure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves….”
Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.
When he was stumping for Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential election, Reagan gave a famous speech (perhaps one of his most famous) titled “A Time for Choosing” in which he said: “This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well, I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down – the upside is man’s old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, but the downside is the path to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.”
We all feel this foreboding sense that America is on a decline, although we enjoyed a short period of optimism with Donald Trump in the White House.
I rage against the Machine every day. I write, I help educate, I use my First Amendment rights to discuss and debate political issues, I come up with solutions and remedies, and I criticize all branches of government when they abuse their power and impose unconstitutional laws and policies. I started a Tea Party movement in my county back in 2009 (which I am still active in to this day), I take up activist causes, I have established relationships with my representatives (federal, state, and local), and I provide free legal advice (especially when it comes to those who are victims of unconstitutional, abusive, or arbitrary government action). I do it for my children and for my grandchildren someday. I do it for my friends and neighbors, whom I have great affection for, I do for those who are poor and uneducated and unable to comprehend the importance of our rights and the need to protect them, I do it for those unable to articulate or speak out, I do it for God. And I do it for you too.
Many have raged against the machine over the years. Reagan reminded us of this back in 1964, when he summoned the spirit of Patrick Henry: “You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. Is nothing in life is worth dying for? Should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ’round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain…… You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, ‘There is a price we will not pay.’ ‘There is a point beyond which they must not advance.’
I hope wherever you are, you too are raging against the machine. A wise President Reagan concluded his “A Time for Choosing” Speech (1964) with these words: “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”
You may forget lessons, birthdays, jokes, and memorable quotes, but always remember these words: “Thank You Lord,” “ I Love You,” “….. Til Death Do We Part,” and “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” These are the important words to live by and which give our lives meaning.
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.
The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State. The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers may be rendered to the national defense, the less frequent will be those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the governments of the particular States. If the new Constitution be examined with accuracy and candor, it will be found that the change which it proposes consists much less in the addition of NEW POWERS to the Union, than in the invigoration of its ORIGINAL POWERS. The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained. The powers relating to war and peace, armies and fleets, treaties and finance, with the other more considerable powers, are all vested in the existing Congress by the articles of Confederation. The proposed change does not enlarge these powers; it only substitutes a more effectual mode of administering them. The change relating to taxation may be regarded as the most important; ….. “
The following is a history of the Pitt County Confederate Soldiers Monument and its removal from the Pitt County Courthouse premises:
The Pitt County Confederate Soldiers Monument is a simple yet eloquent memorial to the Confederate soldiers who died in the War Between the States. It presents a common soldier statue situated atop a tall tapered column. The soldier stands with his arms crossed as they rest atop the muzzle of his rifle with the butt resting on the ground in front of him. He wears a Confederate uniform with a wide brimmed hat. The column bears a bas-relief image of a Confederate flag unfurled around its pole. The plinth contains a medallion above the inscription, and the initials of the Confederate States of America are engraved on the cap above.
The Confederate Soldiers Monument, dedicated to “Our Confederate Dead” and “Erected by the People of Pitt County in Grateful Remembrance of the Courage and Fortitude of Her Confederate Soldiers,” was dedicated on November 11, 1914 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It is clearly a monument reflecting an important period in our American and North Carolina history, as well as being a monument of remembrance. Its inscription reads: “Theirs was not to make reply, Theirs was not to reason why. Theirs was but to do and die.”
There is quite a distinguished and honorable history associated with the monument (also considered as a memorial). During the days of July 19 to 23, 1863, Greenville was raided as part of the Union effort under General Edward Potter to disable the rail routes in the eastern part of the state along with the cotton mills at Rocky Mount. Potter’s advance through New Bern, Kinston, Greenville, Rocky Mount, and Tarboro has become known as Potter’s Raid. Potter and his troops entered Greenville on Sunday the 19th without being met by Confederate troops. Locals reported widespread looting by the Union soldiers following the departure of the troops late in the afternoon.
The Pitt County Confederate Soldiers Monument has been the subject of calls for removal since 2006. A group of citizens petitioned The County Commissioners requesting removal of the towering and distinguished statue from its position on the front corner of the Pitt County Courthouse. On Monday, June 15, 2020, the Pitt County Board of Commissioners voted 7-2 (the two members being Tom Coulson and Lauren White) to immediately remove and relocate the monument. This decision apparently came in the wake of civil protest around the country and in our state following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 by police.
The monument was removed on June 22 and June 23, 2020, under cover of night, and relocated to storage. Apparently, it was Pitt County Sheriff Paula Dance who arranged for the crane and the demolition crew. Its location would not be revealed to the public. However, after more than a year since the monument was taken down from the courthouse premises, the question of where it will be relocated has still not been addressed. Would those same board members approve a motion to go through the many Pitt County cemeteries and have particular grave headstones removed? Board of Commissioners Chairman Melvin McLawhorn indicated that the board would make a decision where to relocate the monument in accordance with state law. And officials suggested that removal, storage, and relocation might cost upwards of $100,000, of course to be borne by the taxpayers. One suggestion for its new location was offered by Mr. Ephraigm Smith, a former County Commission, and that would be on his property, the Pig Palace which is located on Hwy 43 in the Chicod section of Pitt County (private property). It was suggested that the Sons of Confederate Veterans (https://scv.org) take ownership of the monument in order that it remain in the hands of a non-profit public organization rather than private hands. On July 30 of this year the Commissioners adopted this proposal, thus “gifting” the Pitt County Confederate Soldiers Monument to the Sons of Confederate Veterans with certain restrictions (including requiring the monument to be relocated to a suitable site within Pitt County). Further discussion included having Ephraigm Smith lease his property, The Pig Palace, to the SCV, for purposes of the relocation. [As of August 2, 2021, Mr. Smith has not signed any such lease]. As he has stated in an interview with Amber Lake of WITN: “It’s a part of history. It’s probably not a part of history that we all will appreciate, but it is a part of the history of the South and North nonetheless.”
In the same story by Ms. Lake, a Chicod resident has this to say: “The monument doesn’t represent us. And what does it represent? It represents division in the United States and right now, we don’t really need anymore especially where it’s sitting on Hwy 43, a major highway, right next to an elementary school and right down the road from a high school. This sends a bad message.”
A monument, like a work of art, offers different interpretations to different people. There is no copyright on an interpretation. The monument may not represent that particular Chicod resident, but the monument was not dedicated or erected for him. It was dedicated to all the residents of Pitt County. It is part of the legacy of Pitt County and North Carolina in general.
Myron Rouse, a Pitt County resident, commented for another WITN article on the subject: “The monument is not a problem with me because hatred is in the heart. Not in a statue. But at the same time, I understand that a lot of people don’t want to visualize it on public property. This is where we come in a courthouse and we try to get blind justice and so often we don’t receive it so to start off before you even walk in, to see the symbol of racism, the courthouse is just not the proper place for it.”
Pastor Kenneth Jones, also a Pitt County resident, offered this comment at one Commissioner meeting: “I would like to see it out back. That doesn’t mean it necessarily will be. You can’t destroy America because of certain things individuals don’t like.”
By demolishing the foundation to the Pitt County Confederate Soldiers Monument, the County Commissioners have evidenced their intent to be “rid of the monument” and of their intent to never have it removed to the Pitt County Courthouse premises. By having Pitt County Sheriff Paula Dance there to supervise adds an element of complicity, a layer of government over-reach, and frankly, a threat of local tyranny.
The monument was “gifted to the People of Pitt County to honor the legacy of their county by the United Daughters of the Confederacy; it was not gifted to the Pitt County Board of Commissioners.
As history shows, the great majority of Confederate soldiers were from small farms, just barely getting by, and not having any slaves. For all we know, the individual soldiers had individual opinions and views concerning the War to Prevent Southern Independence (aka, the War Between the States). Some certainly supported the secession movement and supported defending their new country, and some certainly supported slavery (or were ambiguous on the position). Others may have opposed the secession of the southern states, opposed the war, and opposed the institution of slavery. It is also known that North Carolina suffered the highest number of losses of any state in the Confederacy at the battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863, in Gettysburg, PA), with a staggering 6,124 casualties. Statistically, that amounts to 25% (1 out of every 4) of all Confederate dead in that historic and significant battle. Yes, North Carolina more than paid the price for defending the Confederate States of America. In fact, some historians (noted on a monument at Gettysburg) estimate that 1 out of every 7 soldiers who died on the many battlefields of the War was from North Carolina.
Clyde Wilson, a noted historian of the Confederacy and member of the Abbeville Institute, published a short manual titled “Lies My Teacher Told Me” in 2016. In this manual, he wrote:
“When we had the controversy over the Confederate flag in South Carolina in 2000, some 90 or more historians issued a statement declaring that the war was about slavery and nothing but slavery and that all contrary explanations are invalid. Fifty years ago, however, the foremost American historians believed that the war was primarily about economic interests and that slavery was a lesser issue (it became an issue only when it became politically expedient to raise it). The Kindergarten lesson of history is that human experience can be seen from more than one perspective. Never let yourself be put down by a so-called expert who claims to know more about ancestors than you do. The qualities needed for understanding history are not some special expertise but are the same qualities you look for in a good juror – the ability to examine the evidence and weigh it impartially and fairly. And history is not some disembodied truth. All history is the story of somebody’s experience. When we talk about the War it is our history we are talking about; it is part of our identity. To tell libelous lies about our ancestors is a direct attack on who we are. It is right and natural for all people to honor their forefathers. We have every right to honor our Confederate forebearers because they are ours. But there is more to it than that. We Southerners are especially fortunate in our forefathers. (The greatest minds of our founding generation came from the South. The supreme intellect that was able to craft our admirable founding documents – Thomas Jefferson with the Declaration of Independence and James Madison with the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights – were citizens of Virginia. Also, the first 7 of our 12 US presidents hail from the South). Our Southern forebearers not only won a place in our hearts, as their descendants, but they also won the lasting admiration of everyone in the civilized world who values an indominable spirit in defense of Freedom and Liberty… Foreigners have a great advantage in judging the right and wrong of the War Between the States. They do not automatically assume that everything Yankees did and do is righteous, true, and unselfish. They view Yankees without the rose-colored glasses with which Yankees view themselves. (Remember, the victors get the benefit of ‘telling the story’).
The most basic simple fact about the War is that it was a war of invasion and conquest. (It was a war to destroy the founding principle, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence, of secession as an inherent and an inalienable right of each sovereign state. In fact, the Declaration itself was a secessionist document.). Once you get clear on this basic fact, everything else falls into place. This is no secret. It is plain in the record. The rulers of the North openly declared that it was a war of conquest, to crush and punish disobedience to government, to establish a powerful central government (as Alexander Hamilton originally called for), and to keep the South captive, as a source of wealth to benefit Northern businesses, infrastructure, and politicians. Abraham Lincoln’s pretty words about ‘saving the union’ and ‘saving government of the people, by the people, and for the people’ were merely window dressing and the exact opposite of the truth. His War was not at all for the purpose of preserving the Union. It was for the purpose of turning the Union into something that it was not meant to be.
The US government, comprised of representation from the Northern states and border states and under the control of a minority party (the Republican Party) launched a massive invasion of the South (note that almost all the battles were fought in the South, including the horrendous “March to the Sea” which involved a scorched-earth policy to inflict the maximum amount of damage and destruction). The Union destroyed the democratic, legitimate elected governments of fourteen Southern states (The Confederate States of America), killed as many of our forefathers as they possibly could, and then deprived them of their citizenship, deprived the former Confederate States of their rightful representation in Congress, subjected them to military occupation (under the punitive Reconstruction Acts), and did many other things that no American, North or South, could previously have imagined were possible. The War was so unpopular in the North that thousands of people (who, by the way, may not have owned slaves, but were fervently anti-black) were imprisoned by Lincoln and the Union Army without due process and elections (mainly in the border states) were conducted at bayonet point, and they had to import 300,000 foreign mercenaries to fill up its army.
What was the main reason the Southern states seceded? Historians refuse to accept what those states plainly said: that they were tired of being ripped off by federal legislation that picked their pockets to siphon money for the benefit some people and select businesses in the North, that they could prove that this was the real economic effect of the Tariff (of Abominations, of 1828, then in 1832, and finally, Lincoln promised to raise the tariff back to its highest level. It was called the ‘Tariff of Abominations’ because of the effects it had on the Southern economy. It set a 38% tax on some imported goods and a 45% tax on certain imported raw materials.), and that they thought the Union should be of mutual benefit to all the states father than a burden to some in order to benefit others. (In fact, the Constitution was adopted by the states on the condition that it would create a ‘common government’ to manage the states equally).”
There are additional books on the subject, written by intellectually credible authors, including: “Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States: The Irrefutable Argument,” by Gene Kizer Jr, “The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths,” by Leonard M. Scruggs (a native of North Carolina), and “Is Davis a Traitor: Or Was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War,” by Albert Taylor Bledsoe (originally published right after the War, in 1866), and “Southern Independence: Why War?” by Charles T. Pace (forward by Clyde Wilson).
Southerners are the most regionally loyal citizens of the United States. But paradoxically – or not – they have traditionally been the most loyal to the country at large, ready to repel insult or injury even though historically they have been the most vilified, maligned, and ridiculed people of the United States. Their loyalty has been severely tested, especially considering that all they ever asked was to be left alone.
Getting back to the Pitt County Confederate Soldiers Monument, One citizen opposed to the monument called it “racist and oppressive.” Another said the monument was “erected to intimidate Negros when the Klan were riding through and burning homes and lynching people.” Jerry McRoy, enjoying a family legacy dating back to the American Revolution era, offers his esteemed view: “I see this monument as part of our local legacy… NOT as a legacy of hate, oppression, or subjugation, but rather, as a legacy of the bravery of the soldiers who laid down their lives to protect this county and this state. The Confederate soldiers memorialized by this monument were serving their country and their state with true loyalty. They were being true to themselves, to the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, and to their forefathers. They had something the seven duplicitous City County Commissions seem to lack… loyalty and fortitude. The grit and determination in their convictions drove their service and sacrifice…. And sustained and justified their last full measure.”
Officials elected by the people are obligated to abide by the laws of the state of North Carolina. They are not above the law and are not expected to break laws of the state and the federal government. They are not expected to betray the public trust; they are not expected to pander to one racial or ideological group over another or others. The seven Criminals, I mean, Commissioners, imputed a racist message to the monument when, in all honesty and clarity, none existed. The monument was simply a memorial to the young men who fought and died for their country, their state, and their new nation, just as a cemetery headstone memorializes the person interned below it. The Confederate Dead monument does not have a single inscription referencing slavery or the supremacy of the white race. In fact, there is no mention of slavery at all. It does not glorify the war nor promote any ill-motivated reason for fighting against the Union Army. It is facially neutral. Any racial overtone or racist connotation is merely a figment of one’s imagination. As Jerry McRoy noted in his letters to the local paper and to individual Commissioners: “Hatred is not found in a statue or monument. It starts in the mind of the individual and flows from animus in the heart.”
All said and done, the 7 members of the Pitt County Board of Commissioners (“The County Criminals” aka, “The County Cowards” aka, “The Criminal Enterprise Known as the Pitt County Board of Commissioners”) missed a golden opportunity to use the Pitt County Confederate Soldiers Monument issue as a chance to educate members of society, of Pitt County, on the War Between the States, the events leading up to it and the reasons the Southern States decided to leave the Union and form a new independent country, as was their sovereign right to do so. Objects, monuments, statues… they are connected to history. And again, the fundamental lesson of history is that human experience can be seen from more than one perspective.
We can’t erase history or shove it down into the black recesses of history books that are never read merely because some people find the “story” offensive. History is not a series of events that entertain the senses and delight the soul; sometimes it’s painful and a reminder of a time in our past when we didn’t live up to our founding principles. But still, it’s part of history. It provides an opportunity for individuals to discuss, debate, and learn; it provides an opportunity to share their views.
The lasting consequence of this dubious action, clearly in violation of North Carolina General Statute G.S. §100-2.1 (“Protection of Monuments, Memorials, and Works of Art”) and also in violation of federal Executive Order 13933 (signed June 26, 2020), may be to resurrect racism where it hasn’t existed for many many years.
Clearly, there are many potential legal challenges to the actions of the 7 Pitt County Commissioners and I wouldn’t put it past the good and decent citizens of Pitt County to pursue them. Some remedies which I know have been discussed include: ((a) The mandatory (if not voluntary) resignation of the 7 County Criminals, including County Manager Elliott; (b) The mandatory (if not voluntary) resignation of Pitt County Sheriff Paula Dance; and (c) Relocating the Pitt County Confederate Soldiers Monument back to its original place at the courthouse. There are certainly others, but it’s not my place to give those plans away.
If anyone would like more information about the monument’s removal, about the criminal conduct of the seven members of the Pitt County Board of Commissioners, the illegal action taken by Sheriff Paula Dance, or if anyone would like to get involved to see justice done regarding the actions taken by the Commissioners and in doing so, to once again bring honor to those Pitt County Confederate soldiers who gave their last full measure, please contact Mr. Jerry McRoy at (908) 246-8881. Concerned citizens can make a difference !!
Democrats continuously harp about how the 2020 election was somehow the “most secure” election in history. The source of their claim? An environmental scientist turned lawyer with zero election experience. But that doesn’t really matter to them. Their goal isn’t to give voters reliable information – it’s to keep voters from asking questions.
But no matter how much the Democrats, mainstream media, and big tech might censor us and shut us down, we need to keep asking questions and demanding an audit of the 2020 election here in North Carolina. It may be inconvenient to them, but it’s no secret to us that corrupt politicians abused so-called “emergency” powers to unconstitutionally rewrite our election laws, eliminate almost every protection against fraud, and then then turned around and lied about how the election was supposedly “secure” (it wasn’t).
Now, the Democrat-controlled Board of Elections in North Carolina is trying to keep lawmakers from investigating the election by threatening them with lawsuits and refusing to turn over information needed for an investigation. What are they so afraid of? What are they hiding?
In the business world, when there’s this much evidence of fraud, you audit. Sure, you might find nothing. You might find something. But what’s certain is that you’ll be closer to the truth, whether big tech and the media think that’s inconvenient or not. Knowledge is the only way we can fix our election processes and secure the vote so that once again, North Carolina can have confidence in our election results.
Here are the facts.
I. Governor Cooper Refused To Clean The Voter Rolls
Voter rolls serve as the first line of defense against voter fraud as the master list of registered voters. Our voter rolls are totally corrupted with deceased voters and ineligible illegal aliens and other non-citizens – it’s well-documented that non-citizens do attempt to vote – yet nothing is being done about it.
When the North Carolina legislature tried to pass a bill that would have purged illegals from the voting rolls, Democrat legislators tried to stop it. When a majority of legislators voted for it and sent it to Governor Cooper, he vetoed it.
Nobody disagrees that illegal aliens are ineligible to vote. So why is Governor Cooper and the Democrats trying to keep illegals on the voter rolls as registered voters, when the law says that’s illegal?
II. The Democrats Enabled Potentially Massive Fraud
There’s no way to guarantee the security of an election without making sure that every single person who walks in to cast a vote is authenticated as the voter they say they are. Thanks to a Democrat-appointee judge erroneously blocking Voter ID for the 2020 election, nobody had their ID checked when they went to vote. They could have been anybody.
But it gets even worse: Voter ID wasn’t just blocked and failed to authenticate registered voters who showed up to vote. It was blocked for same-day voter registrations, meaning people who showed up on election day or during the early voting period to vote in the 2020 election didn’t have to show an ID or proof of residency to register to vote. That is outrageous.
And what of Absentee Ballots, which have historically been secured by two witness signatures and notarization? In 2020, those requirements were eliminated, meaning North Carolina election officials had no way of knowing whether the absentee ballot was actually signed by the person claiming to sign it, and worse still, whether that vote was “harvested” as part of an illegal ballot harvesting operation, especially since North Carolina allowed anonymous, unmonitored absentee ballot drop boxes. Plus, countless North Carolina residents reported receiving absentee ballots even though they never requested them.
Voting under somebody else’s name is illegal. Harvesting ballots is illegal. There may be countless undiscovered illegal votes, made possible by incompetent or corrupt politicians stripping way every voter identity safeguard.
In Arizona, the forensic audit found that 11,326 confirmed voters “were not on the voter rolls on November 7th, but were added to the voter rolls by December 4,” after they had already voted. With so many problems with authentication, we need an audit to see just how many illegal votes were cast, and where.
III. North Carolina Voting Machines Are Woefully Insecure
In North Carolina, countless mistakes or deliberate changes were made that have made it difficult for voters to have full faith in the final counts of the 2020 election.
In 2020, North Carolina approved the use of Election Systems and Software (ES&S) voting machines. These machines, manufactured in China with funding from foreign investors, have widely-known security issues. Alarmingly, these voting machines – already potentially vulnerable to cyber-attacks or intentional manipulation – include a software function that lets the person operating the machine manipulate vote counts. There may be other problems, but the State Board of Elections redacted half of the manual so that nobody can fully understand these machines.
If we knew how ES&S machines work, we might be able to find out why there were so many flaws to the counting process on election night, or why Congressional District 1 results stalled out at 78% for over nine days. No state legislator I’ve spoken to has an answer for this. This alone is reason to audit the election. Vote counting cannot just stop for nine days.
One of these is not like the others.
Across North Carolina, counting issues, undercounts, and miscounts occurred frequently enough to concern every voter. For example, an entire precinct was left completely unreported in Pitt County for several days after the election. In other words, no counting results were being submitted at all from that precinct. This cannot be allowed to happen.
IV. The 2020 Election Was Subject to Unprecedented Interference
The 2020 election was the first in which mainstream media organizations, big tech companies, “elites,” and even postal workers sought to take down an incumbent president by interfering in the election.
Big tech companies like Facebook, whose founder Mark Zuckerberg is a known supporter of Democrats, poured hundreds millions of dollars into “election infrastructure” in Democrat cities, including $5.2 million in North Carolina. With how Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other tech companies censor conservatives, is there any question about who that money was intended to benefit?
Even worse, the National Association of Letter Carriers, one of the biggest postal workers unions, endorsed Biden. Any union or company that is tasked with handling election ballot delivery should never be allowed to endorse a presidential candidate. Given all of the mail-in ballots, were postal workers influenced to work against President Trump? One Wisconsin postal worker swore on an affidavit (under penalty of perjury) that there was a scheme to “backdate” over 100,000 mail-in ballots to make them look like they were mailed before the deadline, since many states including North Carolina counted absentee ballots that were mailed before – but arrived after – election day.
V. Conclusion
It’s clear as day that with the corruption of North Carolina voter rolls, impossibility of authenticating voters, insecure Chinese voting machines, and outside interference, the results of the 2020 election demand higher scrutiny and a full forensic audit.
Some elected officials have come out and claimed that the vote in North Carolina was already audited, but this is a complete and total lie, or serious ignorance by people who should know better. We’ve had recounts. We’ve had a few spot-checks. We have not had an audit. The procedures that have taken place have been limited in scope and not comprehensive. A true forensic audit, like the one taking place in Arizona, means every ballot gets hand-checked, voting systems are examined, voter identity and eligibility is checked, and any illegal votes are uncovered.
I join countless North Carolinians in calling for a comprehensive forensic audit of the 2020 election. In Arizona, the Maricopa County forensic audit has revealed tremendous problems with the administering of the 2020 election, and clear examples of tampering with election materials and security breaches for voting systems and other voting equipment and unclear chain of custody of ballots. That is just the tip of the iceberg, as only one part of their audit has been completed.
All the evidence discussed above (and more) demands an investigation, and It’s time we conduct a full forensic audit of the 2020 election in North Carolina.
At Saturday’s U.S. Olympic Track and Field trials, June 26, athlete Gwen Berry, who calls herself an “activist,” was standing on the podium after receiving her bronze medal in the hammer throw when she turned to face the stands and not the American flag, as the US National Anthem was playing.
Gold and silver medalists DeAnna Price and Brooke Andersen faced the flag with their right hands over the heart while Berry faced away. She eventually picked up a black T-shirt with the words “Activist Athlete” printed on the front and draped it over her head. As she herself explains: “”My purpose and my mission is bigger than sports. I’m here to represent those … who died due to systemic racism. That’s the important part. That’s why I’m going. That’s why I’m here today.”
I didn’t realize that the Olympic forum was a place for individual athletes to express their personal views and political protests. What I DO KNOW is that the athletes on any Olympic team are representing the United States and the values she represents, and every one of the athletes should be required to show her respect.
Do you know what the American flag and the National Anthem mean to me? They are symbols of the greatest country on earth and they remind me how very lucky I am to have been born here.
The flag, in particular, represents the ideal on which our country was founded; it symbolizes Freedom and Liberty. It reminds us of the reasons the many states came together over 200 years ago to form a union, and why the additional states then joined as well – most importantly because they believed in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution (the unadulterated version).
The flag, and the National Anthem as well, will always touch my heart knowing that over the years it has inspired young men and women who value liberty and who love this country deeply to enlist, to fight wars on her behalf, to bring stability to areas of civil unrest, to help spread her values overseas, and to even put his or her life on the line to do so. Often they end up giving their last full measure. I’ll always think of the horrors our young Americans went through in Word War I, in World War II, in Vietnam and Korea, and are going through now with the war on terror.
Others, so much courageous than I, have fought and died so that myself and every other American, including those who hate this country (like Gwen Berry does and in fact, most liberals and progressives) can speak freely, protest robustly, pray everyday to the God they love, keep and bear firearms in their homes, have the right to privacy and due process, and in general, to live life as a free citizen.
Gwen Berry is a piece of sh**, excuse my French. Not only did she turn her back to the flag, but she covered her face with a shirt reading “Activist Athlete.” The United States didn’t offer her a spot on its Olympic team to push her particular cause; it wanted a superior athlete for the great world competition. Not every platform is an occasion to focus on race or racism. She is an Olympic-grade athlete not because of her skin color but because she is extremely gifted athletically. If she is hates the country for its history, and if the flag and National Anthem offend her so, then why does she even want to represent our country in the first place? Any medal she may earn for the team will never be worth the disrespect she shows and the shame she brings upon us as a country. She certainly doesn’t represent any appreciable portion of the people. Why doesn’t she just settle to perform for some liberal university.
Did she, perhaps, take her cue from another activist athlete, Megan Rapinoe ?
If nothing else, I hope this incident will serve as a wake-up call. This conduct – this outright and most public of disrespectful acts against our country – should never again be tolerated. At home, we honor and support freedom of speech and expression. But on the national stage, when performing as a representative (athletic representative) of the United States, that freedom of speech and expression is suspended. It must be suspended. The United States, thru taxpayer funding, spends a lot of money on its Olympic athletes and in return, all she asks for is respect and loyalty. The Olympics is about solidarity, not division. We have enough of that here.
With that in mind, I believe there should be a requirement, or Pledge, for all those athletes who wish to represent the United States on any of its Olympic teams. The questions should include:
Do you pledge to show respect to the United States, to the US flag, and the American National Anthem?
Will you conduct yourself at all times, in the public eye, with respect and class?
If you consider yourself an ‘activist,’ a member of any ‘woke’ group, or have any other personal crusade issues, will you agree to put them aside and abide by (1) and (2) above?
If the answer to any of these questions is “No,” then the response should be “Too Bad, So Sad, GO HOME!” – or better yet, go to another country!
The Democrat Party of the United States….. I have to hand it to you…..
Your plans and platforms have been so progressive, your policies so vile and offensive, your methods so discriminatory, arbitrary,, irrational, and insulting, your goals so utterly divisive and without merit, your rationale so self-serving, blindly-ambitious, and contrary to facts and science, your messaging so revealing a contempt for many, and your loyalties so un-American that you have managed to inspire a whole host of (fascist and Marxist) political parties and regimes all over the world – in particular, the most heinous regime of all, the Nazi Party.
Some say that the Nazi Party was born in Munich, in 1919. Adolf Hitler was living there at the time… a time when the city was consumed with revolutionary activity. He was employed as an intelligence officer and given information about those involved in fomenting a workers’ revolt. To follow up on this lead, Hitler was sent to a meeting of the German Workers’ Party at the city’s Sterneckerbrau, which was a brewery with an inn attached to it. The German Workers’ Party was established by a man named Anton Drexler, who was very specific in the platform he believed would be most attractive to war-torn German workers. He wanted a workers’ party that was strongly nationalistic, desiring the elimination of the Jews, and the recognition of Aryan superiority. Liking very much what he heard, Hitler joined the party.
Over the next few months, Hitler impressed Drexler so much that he was given greater and greater responsibility for developing the party’s political aims and its methods of propaganda. On February 24, 1920, Hitler gave his most effective speech yet, at the city’s Hofbrauhaus, in which he outlined the party’s 25-point manifesto.
Two month’s later, the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (or Nazi Party). Meetings were well-attended and often rowdy… most likely due to Hitler’s fiery speeches which stirred up nationalist passions. To deal with the resulting security issues, Hitler formed the Sturmabteilung (better known as the SA or “brown shirts”) for protection. Within the year, he was able to replace Drexler as party leader.
On the night of November 6, 1923, Nazi stormtroppers attempted to take over several government buildings while Hitler gave a table-top speech in Munich’s Burgerbraukeller to a crowd of about 3,000 people. In that speech, he announced plans for a national revolution and the formation of a new government. This event is famously known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Unfortunately, the event lacked organization and eventually broke down into chaos. The next day, the Nazis marched through the center of the city towards the war ministry building, but were stopped by the police. A fierce gun battle ensued leaving 18 dead, and Hitler was arrested and charged with high treason. He was found guilty of high treason for his part in planning a revolution to topple the short-lived Weimar Republic and sentenced to prison for five years.
[November 9, 1918, with Germany on the verge of defeat at the end of World War I, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the emperor of German, abdicated under pressure from US President Woodrow Wilson. German Generals Ludendorff and Hindenburg then handed the reigns of power over to the left-leaning Social Democrats, giving them the job of forming a democratic republic (the system favored by the victors). On November 9, a republic was proclaimed – the Weimar Republic].
During 1924, with Hitler in prison and writing his book (his manifesto), MEIN KAMPF, he also found time to plan his route to power (by democratic means). Taking cues from other extremist parties, particularly the Communists, he began to organize small local branches of the party and youth organizations of like-minded supporters. He expanded the SA, selecting his most fanatical supporters, many of whom were for former soldiers, to join the newly-formed Sschutzstuffel (or SS) and the Hitler Youth. Next he began to talk about ending the republic and replace it with a government that would serve the German people and their interests far better. He began to talk about the “Jewish problem” and the “Communist problem.” He blamed both groups for selling out the country and for being the main cause of Germany’s problems.
In October 1929, disaster struck the republic with the Wall Street Crash, The economic effects of the Great Depression that followed were felt all over the world. Germany, however, was affected in a particularly bad way. US banks which had loaned Germany money to ease its misery under the Treaty of Versailles (the highly retributive treaty that ended WWI and blamed Germany almost entirely) were forced to call in those loans and ask for the return of the money. Economic collapse followed in Germany. Businesses went bankrupt and unemployment soared. During the winters of 1930-31, and 1931-32, over six million Germans were unemployed. Statistically, that meant that in one in every two families, the breadwinner was out of work.
The time was ripe for change. Hitler’s Nazi Party was looking way more attractive.
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, ramped up his propaganda efforts, creating catchy campaign slogans and posters, appealing to people’s emotions rather than their brains. Goebbels explained his methods: “There are two ways to make a revolution, You can blast your enemy with machine guns until he acknowledges the superiority of those holding the machine guns. That is one way. Or you can transform the nation through a revolution of the spirit….
In March 1932, Adolf Hitler stood I the presidential election, coming in second to the incumbent Paul von Hindenburg. Hitler demanded to be made chancellor but was refused. In January 1933, however, Hindenburg realized that in order to get his policies through, he would need someone in the post who had support in the Reichstag, and consequently, he appointed Hitler as chancellor.
In March 1933, Hitler called for another election (hoping to get more Nazis elected) and the Nazi propaganda machine exploded into overdrive, This time, the Nazi Party had the additional advantages of holding power over the opposition press and having control of the streets either by the police or the SA. A few days before the election, the Reichstag building was mysteriously set on fire. Hitler was quick to blame the Communists, claiming this was the beginning of an uprising or revolt. He demanded emergency powers to deal with the incident and President Hindenburg obliged, with the Emergency Powers Act. Arrests followed immediately and some 4000 Communists, along with other Nazi opponents, were taken off the streets.
The election that Hitler called for saw the Nazis win their biggest ever share of the vote (43.9 percent), which secured an absolute majority of 52 percent. Hitler immediately banned the Communist Party and engineered the passing of the Enabling Act, which gave him the power to rule by decree rather than passing laws through the Reichstag and the president. Essentially, the Act enabled Adolf Hitler to assume dictatorial powers. And assuming such powers he did. He used the Enabling Act to restrict or suspend many of the German peoples’ civil rights.
Within weeks, dictator Hitler had cleared the civil service, court and education systems of “alien elements,” including Jews and other Nazi critics, banned all trade unions, passed a law preventing the formation of new political parties, and taken control of all German state governments. The following year, 1934, Hitler began sending any remaining political opponents to the hastily-built “wild camps” – the forerunners of the more permanent concentration camps. He perceived some of these “remaining political opponents” to be among his own camp, in the SA, and so on the week-end of June 29-30, he launched the so-called “Night of the Long Knives” against the leadership of the SA. Squads of SS men murdered up to 400 people that week-end.
On August 1, Hitler’s cabinet enacted a law abolishing the office of President and combining its powers with those of the Chancellor. Thus, Adolf Hitler became head of state as well as the head of government, giving him full control of the legislative and executive branches of government. (He would later pass a law asserting himself as head of Germany’s state church). The following day, on August 2, Paul von Hindenburg passed away, and Hitler quickly anointed himself as the supreme leader (the “Fuhrer”) of Germany. Following the announcement, the army swore an oath of personal loyalty to him.
This marked the start of the Third Reich.
When looking for policies to promote and ways to articulate them, Adolf Hitler and leadership members of his Nazi Party looked to The US Democratic Party, especially the Southern Democrats. After all, the Southern Democrats were highly successful at prioritizing white supremacy, at classifying its citizens into superior class or race and an inferior race (and mixing of the two, socially and certainly sexually was essentially looked down upon or forbidden), and at keeping its inferior class without firearms and without an opportunity to vote. Nazi Party ideas for mass propaganda, ethnic cleansing and eugenics, its use of fear, threats, intimidation, and strong-arm tactics, and even its plan for the “Final Solution” of the Jews came from the Democrat Party and its ilk.
As we all know, Adolf Hitler outlined his core beliefs on race and the creation of a superior Aryan race (“The Master Race”) in his book MEIN KAMPF (“My Struggle”) which he wrote, with the help of a ghost writer, while he was in prison in 1925. Influenced by views on Social Darwinism and eugenics, he believed that interbreeding between different racial and ethnic groups was wrong, was against science, would bring about harmful consequences, and would hamper the development of his master race. He claimed that “Blood mixture and the resultant drop in the racial purity level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures….” Hitler’s ideas included the characterization of races into “uber” and “unter” menschen (which means ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ peoples) and the exploitation of one by the other. Because the German people, as he explained, are superior, it would only be natural for Aryan subordination of the inferior and weaker races, such as the Jews, Gypsies, Slavs (Poles, Serbs, Russians) and others. The Aryan master race would also dominate and subordinate the physically and mentally disabled, of course.
Hitler began to pursue and implement his racial policies once he was in power (January 1933). He instigated a program, on several levels, to cleanse German society of those he regarded as “biological threats to the nation’s health.” First, he had to prevent the propagation of the “unfit.” He had a term for them – “useless mouths.” He would achieve this initially through forced sterilization. He would later resort to euthanasia or other means of forced killing, with his “Removing the Useless Mouths” program.
In late 1939, a new set of duties were added to the Nazi regime’s program of mass murder …. Working with Hitler’s doctor, Philipp Bouhler, the national manager of the Nazi Party organization, was given the responsibility for planning and implementing a secret program – Aktion T4 (after its head address in Tiergartenstrasse, in Berlin). In line with the Nazi Party plan for racial purity, Aktion T4 involved the systemic euthanasia or forced killing of “useless mouths.” Useless mouths included the insane, other asylum inmates, and those with incurable illnesses or conditions. In Hitler’s view, such ‘useless mouths” were an unnecessary drain on the resources of the Reich. [Research suggests that the total number of deaths in the Reich and in occupied eastern Europe at the hands of Aktion T4 and later other euthanasia programs was well over 300,000 individuals].
The Nazis were convinced that forced sterilization and forced killing of those with mental and physical disabilities was justified by utilitarian and economic concerns. The measure of an individual’s worth, and hence life, according to Nazi doctrine, should be viewed in economic terms. After all, preventing them from reproducing or killing them was critical to help reduce the cost of the taking care of the “defectives” or non-producing members of the population. The Nazis claimed that its doctrine was simply reflective of basic utilitarian moral principles.
[According to a 2012 article in the medical journal The Lancet, the Nazi effort to purge their society of undesirables included 350,000 coerced sterilizations, the euthanasia of 260,000 psychiatric patients, the practice of eugenics, race medicine, the killing of children regarded as “defective,” and at least 25,000 experiments].
Then, of course, came the real object of his “genetic purity” program – the creation of an Aryan Master Race. It would involve the breeding of pure Germans to produce the blonde, blue-eyed individuals that would be the hallmark of such a race. It would involve Eugenics. And it would also involve the dehumanization of the Jewish race, removing them from German society, and passing laws (The Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935) excluding German Jews from Reich citizenship, prohibiting them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of “German or related blood,” disenfranchising them from owning and operating a business, owning property, and depriving them of most political rights.
The volume of laws against them made it crystal clear to the Jews just how deeply they were despised.
During the Holocaust, the Nazis described the Jews as “Christ killers,” as “rats,” and as “Untermenschen” (subhumans). They didn’t mean the term untermenschen metaphorically.. Oh no. They didn’t mean they were like subhumans. They meant they were literally subhuman.
The bottom line was that there MUST not be any inter-breeding and hence dilution of the fine Aryan genes from the “rats” that were the Jews.
Females wanting an abortion refer to their condition as nothing more than “a clump of cells.” Liberals and progressives (ie, Democrats) refer to whites (other than themselves, of course) as “white supremacists,” as “oppressors,” and as “domestic terrorists.” Hutus involved in infamous the Rwanda genocide called the Tutsis “cockroaches.” Slave owners throughout history considered slaves “property,” “an inferior race only fit to serve other races,” and sometimes even “subhuman animals.” To the Nazis, as it is to the Communists, Marxists, Socialists, Fascists, and the US Democrat Party, it is important to define and describe certain classes of people (including the unborn) in wretched and dehumanizing terms because that is what opens the door for cruelty and even genocide.
Margaret Sanger, a God-send to the Democrat Party and champion to liberals and progressives everywhere, the woman who championed eugenics and founded Planned Parenthood, outlined her core belief in a book she published in 1922. She described, as her main objectives: “More children from the fit and less from the unfit — that is the chief aim of birth control.” The people Sanger considered “unfit” were “all non-Aryan people.” She estimated that these people–the “dysgenic races,” which comprised 70 percent of the American population at the time, posed a “great biological menace to the future of civilization . . . and (they) deserved to be treated like criminals.” She proposed a method to “segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying.” According to her book and in her discussion of her views, successful implementation of her proposals, according to her , would result in “a race of thoroughbreds.”
Does this sound similar to Nazi ideology? The similarity to Nazi doctrine was definitely not a coincidence. As it turned out, Sanger devoted the entire April 1933 issue of Birth Control Review to eugenics. One of the articles, “Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need,” which was written by Ernst Rudin, Hitler’s director of genetic sterilization and a founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene. [Many people didn’t or don’t know that Sanger’s early campaign was aimed primarily at east Europeans. By 1939, however, she began to target blacks by creating the “Negro Project,” to promote birth control and sterilization specifically within the black community, which is what most people associate her with].
The Nuremberg Laws (or Nuremberg Race Laws) were instituted on September 15, 1935. At their annual party rally, the Nazis announce new laws that revoke Reich citizenship for Jews and prohibit Jews from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of “German or related blood.” “Racial infamy,” as it became known, was made a criminal offense. The Nuremberg Laws defined a “Jew” as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents. Consequently, the Nazis classified thousands of people as Jews who had converted from Judaism to another religion, among them even Roman Catholic priests and nuns and Protestant ministers whose grandparents were Jewish.
On October 18 of that same year, new marriage requirements were instituted. The “Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People” required all prospective marriage partners to obtain from the public health authorities a certificate of fitness to marry. Such certificates were refused to those suffering from “hereditary illnesses” and contagious diseases and those attempting to marry in violation of the Nuremberg Laws.
On November 14, the Nuremberg Law were extended to other groups. The first supplemental decree of the Nuremberg Laws extended the prohibition on marriage or sexual relations between people who could produce “racially suspect” offspring. A week later, the minister of the interior interpreted this term to mean relations between “those of German or related blood” and Gypsies, Black people, or their offspring.
The Nuremberg Race Laws were just the beginning. First the Jews were denied the benefits of being a German citizen, they were denied the ability to own a business, to own a home, to marry outside their race, etc. Next came the forced removal of the Jews from Germany and all occupied territories of eastern Europe and confinement first in “ghettos” and then to concentration camps (at first referred to as “work camps”). Then came the coup d’grace…. The Final Solution.
The dehumanization of the Jews by the Nazi Party provided the rationale for the outright discrimination of the Jews, the expulsion of them from German society, the prohibition of Germans inter-marrying with them, and the rounding them up and sending them to ghettos and work camps. It apparently also caused the German people, and in almost all cases, the world community in general, to ignore what the Nazis had in mind all along – the extermination and genocide of the Jews in Germany and in all its occupied territories. The dehumanization of the Jews has rightfully been considered as the single most factor that enabled the most heinous event in the 20th century and perhaps all of human history – The Final Solution, in which more than six million Jews were systematically killed, mostly by sending them to the gas chamber or by shooting them. Dehumanization makes such carnage possible.
In one of the last entries in Joseph Goebbels diary (1945), he wrote: “It’s necessary to exterminate these Jews like rats, once and for all. In Germany, thank God, we’ve already taken care of that. I hope that the world will follow this example.”
The term “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” was a euphemism used by Nazi Germany’s leaders. It referred to the mass murder of Europe’s Jews and it represented their absolute callousness towards the Jewish race. It brought an end to policies aimed at encouraging or forcing Jews to leave the German Reich and other parts of Europe. Those policies were replaced by systematic annihilation. The genocide of the Jews was the culmination of a decade of increasingly severe discriminatory measures aimed at getting rid of the “Jewish problem.”
It isn’t clear when exactly Hitler decided to murder Europe’s Jewish population. But we do know that he left the ultimate plan and the details to one of his closest associates, Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of Germany’s Security Police. On January 20, 1942, Heydrich held a secret meeting known as the Wannsee Conference at which he and other attendees discussed the Final Solution and its implementation. [A little-known fact is that
Nazi leaders envisioned killing 11 million Jews as part of the Final Solution. They succeeded in murdering 6 million], for which they were tried and brought to justice for.
The Nuremberg trials were conducted by an international tribunal made up of representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain. It was the first trial of its kind in history, and the testimony that was heard would shock the world. The trial began on November 20, 1945 and continued for almost a full year, until October 16, 1946. Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis went on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, for atrocities committed during World War II. Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, the British member, presided over the proceedings, which lasted 10 months and consisted of 216 court sessions.
In his opening statement at the start of the Nuremburg Trials, on November 30, 1945, US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who was appointed to be the chief US prosecutor, said: “In the prisoners’ dock sit twenty-odd broken men…. Their personal capacity for evil is forever past. It is hard now to perceive in these men as captives the power by which., as Nazi leaders, they once dominated much of the world and terrified most of it. Merely as individuals, their fate is of little consequence…… What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners are living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power….. Civilization can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with men in whom those forces now precariously survive.”
In his speech before sentencing, Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, President of the Tribunal, said of the accused: “They have been responsible in large measure for the miseries and suffering of millions of men, women, and children… Without their military guidance, the aggressive ambitions of Hitler and his fellow Nazis would have been academic and sterile… they were a ruthless and military caste….. Many of these men have made a mockery of the soldier’s oath of obedience to military orders. When it suits their defence they say they had to obey; when confronted with Hitler’s brutal crimes which are shown to have been in their general knowledge, they say they disobeyed. The truth is that they actively participated in all these crimes or sat silent and acquiescent, witnessing the commission of crimes on a scale larger and more shocking than the world has ever had the misfortune to know.”
On October 1, 1946, 12 architects of Nazi policy were sentenced to death. Seven others were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 years to life, and three were acquitted. Of the original 24 defendants, one, Robert Ley, committed suicide while in prison, and another, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, was deemed mentally and physically incompetent to stand trial. Among those condemned to death by hanging were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi minister of foreign affairs; Hermann Goering, leader of the Gestapo and the Luftwaffe; Alfred Jodl, head of the German armed forces staff; and Wilhelm Frick, minister of the interior. On October 16, 10 of the architects of Nazi policy were hanged. Goering, who at sentencing was called the “leading war aggressor and creator of the oppressive program against the Jews,” committed suicide by poison on the eve of his scheduled execution. Nazi Party leader Martin Bormann was condemned to death in absentia (but is now believed to have died in May 1945).
In 1946, the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial was the first of twelve military tribunals held in Germany after the defeat of Germany and Japan. Twenty doctors and three administrators — twenty-two men and a single woman — stood accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. They had participated in Hitler’s euthanasia program, in which around 200,000 mentally and physically handicapped people deemed unfit to live were gassed to death, and they performed fiendish medical experiments on thousands of Jewish, Russian, Roma and Polish prisoners. Principal prosecutor Telford Taylor began his opening statement with these somber words:
“The defendants in this case are charged with murders, tortures and other atrocities committed in the name of medical science. The victims of these crimes are numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A handful only are still alive; a few of the survivors will appear in this courtroom. But most of these miserable victims were slaughtered outright or died in the course of the tortures to which they were subjected … To their murderers, these wretched people were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals.”
The Nazi regime has fallen into the categories of “barbarism and brutality”, of “man’s inhumane treatment of his fellow man.” In fact, it was only during the Nuremberg Trials that the horrors and brutality of the Holocaust were discussed in a public forum. The world finally learned just how depraved, sadistic, and callous the Nazis were. Quickly, Hitler was forgotten and the German people embarrassed and ashamed at what their leaders were capable of.
But the same cannot be said for America’s Democratic Party. It still refuses to believe that it was responsible for so many bad things for so many years. Like good Democrats, party leaders and members blame all the ills of our country on others. And the worst of it all is that the Party continues to do bad things, such as divide the country along the lines of race, of rigging elections, falsifying data, commandeering the mainstream media in order to send out misinformation, committing crimes (such as violating the Espionage Act, and getting away with them, of using a false standard of interpretation (“it’s a living, breathing document”) in order to transform the US Constitution without having to follow the legal route (which is outlined in Article V), of vilifying good, decent, and patriotic Americans for the sole purpose of elevating other classes of persons, of continuing to treat blacks as “victims” (and to make sure they continue to think of themselves in such terms), and of polluting the education system with lies, falsehoods, and policies based on hate. inciting violence,
America’s Democratic Party, you can indeed be proud of your record:
(A). The creation of the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan was a militant organization that threatened and intimidated blacks from possessing firearms, owning property, running for office, and voting. It was especially effective at intimidation and violence, and especially effective at preventing blacks from going to the ballot box.
(B). The design and implementation of Jim Crow laws, which effectively established a segregated society. This was known as the Jim Crow era, an era that witnessed the systematic discrimination and oppression of black people, particularly in the South.
(C). The Prevention of blacks from Voting. The Southern Democrats used many devices and schemes to keep blacks from casting a vote and having their voices heard:
Literacy Tests. Literacy tests, as proponents would claim, were used to prove an applicant’s ability to read and understand English. They claimed that the exams ensured an educated and informed electorate. In practice, of course, they were used to disqualify immigrants and the poor, who had less education. In the South they were used to prevent African Americans from registering to vote. For example, in Mississippi, applicants were required to transcribe and interpret a section of the state constitution and write an essay on the responsibilities of citizenship. Registration officials selected the questions and interpreted the answers, effectively choosing which applicants to pass and which to fail. [The Voting Rights Act ended the use of literacy tests in the South in 1965 and the rest of the country in 1970].
Poll Taxes. Poll taxes are essentially a voting fee. The use of poll taxes began in the 1890s as a legal way to keep blacks from voting in southern states. Eligible voters were required to pay their poll tax before they could cast a ballot. A “grandfather clause” excused some poor whites from payment if they had an ancestor who voted before the Civil War, but there were no exemptions for blacks.
Voter Roll Purges. From time to time, white Democrat officials would purge the voting rolls, often of black persons (because almost every black person was assumed to belong to the Republican Party). These persons would arrive at the polls only to find out that they “were not registered to vote.”
All-White Primary Elections. In the South, from about 1900 – 1960, blacks were not allowed to vote in the Democrat Party primary elections. White Democrats said the Democrat Party was a “club” and did not allow black members. And so, blacks could not participate and vote in the only elections that mattered.
Violence. Blacks who tried to vote were threatened, beaten, and even killed. Their family members were often also harmed and sometimes their homes would be burned down.
(D) The Obama Years. It was during the two terms that Barack Obama sat in the Oval Office that overt and obvious government targeting of political opponents took place. (And by “political opponents” I mean Tea Party groups, other patriot groups, and most other true conservatives). And it was never officially challenged nor was Obama ever called to explain or to answer for it.
In an unguarded moment in April 2008, just weeks ahead of the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama, then a freshman senator at the cusp of a historic presidential bid, turned the nation’s attention to Pennsylvania’s working-class voters, a group hard hit by job losses. Speaking behind closed doors at a fundraiser in San Francisco, the then-presidential hopeful spoke of the resentment across the state’s rust belt: “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them… They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
How prophetic those words would turn out to be. Just 3 short months after being sworn in as President, he went right to work in having his Department of Homeland Security, with Janet Napolitano as Secretary, issue a new statement of guidance on who exactly are the greatest threats to America –Tea Party leaders, Tea Party and other patriotic groups), white supremacists, anti-government persons and groups (ie, “Obama haters”), military veterans, other veterans, disgruntled military personnel and veterans, persons and groups which advocate for militias, “Christian Identity” organizations, supporters of the second amendment (the right to keep and bear arms), those who oppose gun control, those who are reported to be making bulk purchases of ammunition, and those calling for enforcement and even strengthening of immigration laws. The report lumps all such persons and organizations into one term – “Rightwing Extremists.” The title of the newly-created guidance, which was issued on April 7, 2009, was “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” [You can read the document below in the Addendum]. To the Obama administration, they posed the greatest threat of extreme opposition to his policies, posed the greatest threat of becoming radicalized, and posed the greatest threat to American peace, and therefore needed to be “watched” by all levels of law enforcement (federal, state, and even local) and scrutinized.
The report inter-changes the term “Rightwing Extremists” with another, more incendiary term – “Rightwing Terrorists.” At one point, the report makes this audacious statement: “Most statements by rightwing extremists have been rhetorical, expressing concerns about the election of the first African American president, but stopping short of calls for violent action.”
And then the IRS, under Lois Lerner, targeted all groups being a “Tea Party” or having “tea party” or “patriot” or “liberty” in their names to have their application for tax-exemption status denied. It turned out to be a huge scandal. President Obama publicly stated that he was sure that it was simply an oversight on Ms. Lerner’s part and there was no animus or intent in her department’s rejects, but an audit found otherwise.
US federal tax law, specifically Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. § 501(c)), exempts certain types of nonprofit organizations from having to pay federal income tax. The statutory language of IRC 501(c)(4) generally requires civic organizations described in that section to be “operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare”. Treasury regulations interpreting this statutory language apply a more relaxed standard, namely, that the organization “is operated primarily for the purpose of bringing about civic betterments and social improvements”. As a result, the IRS traditionally has permitted organizations described in IRC 501(c)(4) to engage in lobbying and political campaign activities if those activities are not the organization’s primary activity.
The fact is that Obama was looking out for his re-election campaign in 2012 and wanted to make sure Tea Party and other patriot and conservative groups were not organized under the tax laws and thus unable to meaningfully influence the election – whether to promote his opposition candidate or to take out campaign ads tarnishing his name and record. Plain and simple, it was government-sponsored targeting and suppression of political opponents.
Indeed, President Obama turned the government against certain classes of citizens. He weaponized the government specifically against Tea Party and other patriot groups, their leaders, veterans, Christians, and good old-fashioned patriotic conservative citizens who, yes, “cling to their guns and their religion,” just as the Americans did who founded this country, who worked hard to build her into a superpower, and who join the armed services to defend her and to go to the rescue of others. Those who “cling to their guns and religion” are the salt of the earth (ie, they represent the best or noblest elements of our country). .
(E). Black Lives Matter Movement. The Democrat Party sees everything in terms of race; it classifies everything in terms of race. Any act by a white man against a black man (even if unintentional) is an act of white supremacy and an act of oppression against the black man. And so, it is no wonder, that when Obama quickly went public about a “home break-in” in Boston before knowing the facts, he incited a national racial dialogue and began the great racial divide that continues to plague our country. On July 16, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after an incident at his home in Cambridge, MA. He was arrested by local police officer Sgt. James Crowley, who was responding to a 911 caller’s report of men breaking and entering the residence. (no mention of race was made on that call). The story, though, caught attention because of the potential racial overtones — Sgt. James Crowley, who arrested Gates, is white. And Gates raised the issue of whether he might have been “profiled.” President Obama, when asked about the incident at a news conference the following week, said he thought police “acted stupidly.” He clearly insinuated that police profile blacks and that inherent racism continues to plague law enforcement. With Obama’s unchecked comments, racism came through the floors and infected our country.
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is an off-shoot of such an infection. BLM is characterized as a “political and social movement” that protests against incidents of police brutality and racially-motivated violence against black people. Their tactics often involve acts of violence and wonton destruction of property, including looting, burning, beatings, etc. The movement began in July 2013 with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of black teen Trayvon Martin 17 months earlier in February 2012. (Note that the results of an investigation and a court ruling found that it was Trayvon who initiated a deadly conflict with Zimmerman and it was Zimmerman who rightly acted in self-defense]. The movement became nationally recognized for street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two African Americans, that of Michael Brown (which resulted in protests and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, a city near St. Louis) and Eric Garner in New York City (who told police over and over that he could not breathe when they tried to subdue him… needlessly). Since the Ferguson protests, participants in the movement have demonstrated against the deaths of numerous other African Americans by police actions or while in police custody.
During the days of nightly Black Lives Matter riots, Democrat Governor Roy Cooper told business owners in downtown Raleigh that since “white supremacy” and “poverty” exist, they deserve to have their businesses looted, burned down, and eventually closed down. We all see how violence and wonton property destruction is able to cure racism.
(F). The lowering of Education Standards. To address the black achievement gap in education, black advocacy groups claim that black students need changes to educational policies, structures, and standards.
(G). Anti-Police Sentiment and Senseless Violence Against Police Officers. Anti-police sentiment is an off-shoot of the Black Lives Matter movement. They are essentially tied together in one big modern racist movement. Anti-police sentiment spread across the country exponentially by leftist activist groups during the protests and riots that followed the death of convicted felon George Floyd, a black man, during an arrest (gone bad) in Minneapolis last year. As we all remember, the officer knelt on Floyd’s neck and back for more than eight minutes as he repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe. He then became unresponsive. Since then, anti-police sentiment has grown.
The rise in an anti-police sentiment has manifested itself in attacks, some targeted and/or premeditated, on officers, patrol vehicles and precinct stationhouses, leaving cops around the country vulnerable, facing an increased risk in harm or death on the job, or feeling under siege. In what sane world would people want to make enemies of the ones sworn to “serve and protect”?
All in all, 45 officers were killed in 2020 simply for wearing the uniform and so far in 2021, 28 officers have been killed for the same reason. In response, police officers are leaving the job in record numbers. The top three police departments in the country have lost thousands of officers, by an increase in retirements, transfers, or outright resignations. The largest police department in the country, the New York Police Department (NYPD) is down about 1,500 officers, mostly on account of hostility towards law enforcement and threats from such organizations as BLM. And the result is clear – crime is spiking. While overall crime in the city continues to decline slightly, shootings are still on the rise. The number of shootings in NYC, for example, doubled in 2020 (as compared to 2019). And so far (as of the middle of June), 721 people have been shot, which is the highest number since 2002. In sum, shootings in NYC have gone up 100 percent since the anti-police movement started.
The Chicago Police Department has lost more than 700 officers since 2019 and shootings in the windy city have gone up 50 percent. The Los Angeles Police Department has lost more than 600 officers since 2019 and the number of shootings has gone up 40 percent.
The bottom line is that movement that has been vilifying law enforcement has resulted in the enormous increase in crime, with murders and shootings topping the list.
(H). The Pushing of Critical Race Theory in government agencies and offices, in private businesses, and in US public schools. According to expert Christopher Rufo: “Critical race theory is the idea that the United States is a fundamentally racist country and that all of our institutions including the law, culture, business, the economy are all designed to maintain white supremacy. And the critical race theorists argue that all of these institutions are in a sense beyond reforming, they really need to be completely dismantled in order to liberate the oppressed people… It sounds extreme but I think the best way to think about it is you take the old Marxist concept of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie or the oppressed and the oppressor. But instead of looking at it in economic terms as Marx did you change it and you graft the new identity politics and you think of it in racial terms. So, instead of the poor and the rich it’s essentially the white and the people of color are the two dynamics. And this is the new oppressor and oppressed and all of the old Marxist, dialectic is really just reinterpreted through the lens of race. And that’s really at the heart of critical race theory. And then what you see is that that basic academic concept is repackaged in diversity trainings, articles, academic literature, HR programs, but that’s really the key core philosophical concept at its heart….. According to the critical race theorists these institutions were designed in many cases explicitly to uphold white supremacy and then over time they’ve shifted where we don’t have explicit racism, slavery, then segregation. And they basically say oppression hasn’t been abolished, oppression has simply become more sophisticated, become more subtle, become more insidious. So they make the argument that we have a system today that is akin to slavery but it’s more implicit, it’s more subconscious, it’s more hidden. And again, the constant they hold is that racism and white supremacy are constant, they’re ubiquitous, they’re everywhere at all times. It’s just up to the intelligentsia or the vanguard to understand it, uncover it and demolish it.
With respect to education, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a policy or plan to have educators and administrators in our North Carolina public school system emphasize RACE and how racism is inherent and prevalent in our society and in our country as a whole – whether intentional, unintentional, direct, subtle, incidental, or systemic. And by emphasizing it and teaching it to our children, they are indoctrinating them also to focus on race and to see things in terms of race. We’re talking about children whose brains are not yet fully developed and who are especially vulnerable and susceptible to what is taught to them. As we all know, discrimination and racism go back to the days of slavery and then the Jim Crow era, and apparently to progressives and Democrats, the discrimination still continues. In fact, they say, it’s now engrained into our system.
Inherent in Critical Race Theory is the notion that whites are “privileged” in this county and therefore somehow bad; they are seen as “oppressors” who overwhelmingly benefit in our society. And African-Americans continue to be victims of discrimination and systemic racism; they continue to be the oppressed. Basically, CRT is just another form of racism. It is substituting a new form of racism for the racism of the past. It is unconstitutional, as it offends the fourteenth amendment, the words in our Declaration of Independence (“that all men are created equal”), and our fundamental notions of equality. Equally, it flies in the face of the Golden Rule where we are taught to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves.
According to Sloan Rachmuth, president of Education First Alliance, NC: “Racial discrimination and critical race theory matter, not just because they erode the fabric of this nation, or threaten our freedom, they matter because they fly in the face of the belief that every person, every child, is just as important as the next.”
References:
“Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” Office of Homeland Security, April 7, 2009. Referenced at: https://fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf
[Forward: Experts agree higher education needs to do more to create equity for Black students. But more attention needs to be paid to barriers Black students face before they step foot on campus].
Petr Svab, “Police Officers Leaving in Droves; Crime Spiking,” Epoch Times, June 23, 2021. (hard copy)
ADDENDUM: OFFICE OF HOMELEAND SECURITY; OFFICE OF INTELLIGENCE & ANALYSIS
Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment
April 7, 2009
Prepared by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch, Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division. Coordinated with the FBI.
Scope: —
This product is one of a series of intelligence assessments published by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch to facilitate a greater understanding of the phenomenon of violent radicalization in the United States. The information is provided to federal, state, local, and tribal counterterrorism and law enforcement officials so they may effectively deter, prevent, preempt, or respond to terrorist attacks against the United States. Federal efforts to influence domestic public opinion must be conducted in an overt and transparent manner, clearly identifying United States Government sponsorship
Key Findings —
The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing*
terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first
African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.
— Threats from white supremacist and violent antigovernment groups during 2009 have been largely rhetorical and have not indicated plans to carry out violent acts. Nevertheless, the consequences of a prolonged economic
downturn—including real estate foreclosures, unemployment, and an inability to obtain credit—could create a fertile recruiting environment for rightwing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past.
— Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal
through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.
The current economic and political climate has some similarities to the 1990s when rightwing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs, and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers.
— During the 1990s, these issues contributed to the growth in the number of domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups and an increase in violent acts targeting government facilities, law enforcement officers, banks, and infrastructure sectors.
— Growth of these groups subsided in reaction to increased government scrutiny as a result of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and disrupted plots, improvements in the economy, and the continued U.S. standing
as the preeminent world power.
The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.
— Proposed imposition of firearms restrictions and weapons bans likely would attract new members into the ranks of rightwing extremist groups, as well as potentially spur some of them to begin planning and training for
violence against the government. The high volume of purchases and stockpiling of weapons and ammunition by rightwing extremists in anticipation of restrictions and bans in some parts of the country continue to be a primary concern to law enforcement.
— Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.
Current Economic and Political Climate —
DHS/I&A assesses that a number of economic and political factors are driving a resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalization activity. Despite similarities to the climate of the 1990s, the threat posed by lone wolves and small terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years. In addition, the historical election of an African American president and the prospect of policy changes are proving to be a driving force for rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalization.
— A recent example of the potential violence associated with a rise in rightwing extremism may be found in the shooting deaths of three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 4 April 2009. The alleged gunman’s reaction reportedly was influenced by his racist ideology and belief in antigovernment conspiracy theories related to gun confiscations, citizen detention camps, and a Jewish-controlled “one world government.”
Exploiting Economic Downturn —
Rightwing extremist chatter on the Internet continues to focus on the economy, the perceived loss of U.S. jobs in the manufacturing and construction sectors, and home foreclosures. Anti-Semitic extremists attribute these losses to a deliberate conspiracy conducted by a cabal of Jewish “financial elites.” These “accusatory” tactics are employed to draw new recruits into rightwing extremist groups and further radicalize those already subscribing to extremist beliefs. DHS/I&A assesses this trend is likely to accelerate if the economy is perceived to worsen.
Historical Presidential Election —
Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election timeframe to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential sympathizers.
— Most statements by rightwing extremists have been rhetorical, expressing concerns about the election of the first African American president, but stopping short of calls for violent action. In two instances in the run-up to the election, extremists appeared to be in the early planning stages of some threatening activity targeting the Democratic nominee, but law enforcement interceded.
Revisiting the 1990s —
Paralleling the current national climate, rightwing extremists during the 1990s exploited a variety of social issues and political themes to increase group visibility and recruit new members. Prominent among these themes were the militia movement’s opposition to gun control efforts, criticism of free trade agreements (particularly those with Mexico), and highlighting perceived government infringement on civil liberties as well as white supremacists’ longstanding exploitation of social issues such as abortion, inter-racial crimes, and same-sex marriage. During the 1990s, these issues contributed to the growth in the number of domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups and an increase in violent acts targeting government facilities, law enforcement officers, banks, and infrastructure sectors.
Economic Hardship and Extremism —
Historically, domestic rightwing extremists have feared, predicted, and anticipated a cataclysmic economic collapse in the United States. Prominent antigovernment conspiracy theorists have incorporated aspects of an impending economic collapse to intensify fear and paranoia among like-minded individuals and to attract recruits during times of economic uncertainty. Conspiracy theories involving declarations of martial law, impending civil strife or racial conflict, suspension of the U.S. Constitution, and the creation of citizen detention camps often incorporate aspects of a failed economy. Antigovernment conspiracy theories and “end times” prophecies could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition, and weapons. These teachings also have been linked with the radicalization of domestic extremist individuals and groups in the past, such as violent Christian Identity organizations and extremist members of the militia movement.
Illegal Immigration —
Rightwing extremists were concerned during the 1990s with the perception that illegal immigrants were taking away American jobs through their willingness to work at significantly lower wages. They also opposed free trade agreements, arguing that these arrangements resulted in Americans losing jobs to countries such as Mexico.
Over the past five years, various rightwing extremists, including militias and white supremacists, have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, rallying point, and recruiting tool. Debates over appropriate immigration levels and enforcement policy generally fall within the realm of protected political speech under the First Amendment, but in some cases, anti-immigration or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed
against specific groups and has the potential to turn violent.
DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremist groups’ frustration over a perceived lack of government action on illegal immigration has the potential to incite individuals or small groups toward violence. If such violence were to occur, it likely would be isolated, small-scale, and directed at specific immigration-related targets.
— DHS/I&A notes that prominent civil rights organizations have observed an increase in anti-Hispanic crimes over the past five years.
— In April 2007, six militia members were arrested for various weapons and explosives violations. Open source reporting alleged that those arrested had discussed and conducted surveillance for a machinegun attack on Hispanics.
— A militia member in Wyoming was arrested in February 2007 after communicating his plans to travel to the Mexican border to kill immigrants crossing into the United States.
Legislative and Judicial Drivers —
Many rightwing extremist groups perceive recent gun control legislation as a threat to their right to bear arms and in response have increased weapons and ammunition stockpiling, as well as renewed participation in paramilitary training exercises. Such activity, combined with a heightened level of extremist paranoia, has the potential to facilitate criminal activity and violence.
— During the 1990s, rightwing extremist hostility toward government was fueled by the implementation of restrictive gun laws—such as the Brady Law that established a 5-day waiting period prior to purchasing a handgun and the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that limited the sale of various types of assault rifles—and federal law enforcement’s handling of the confrontations at Waco, Texas and Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
— On the current front, legislation has been proposed this year requiring mandatory registration of all firearms in the United States. Similar legislation was introduced in 2008 in several states proposing mandatory tagging
and registration of ammunition. It is unclear if either bill will be passed into law; nonetheless, a correlation may exist between the potential passage of gun control legislation and increased hoarding of ammunition, weapons stockpiling, and paramilitary training activities among rightwing extremists.
Open-source reporting of wartime ammunition shortages has likely spurred rightwing extremists—as well as law-abiding Americans—to make bulk purchases of ammunition. These shortages have increased the cost of ammunition, further exacerbating rightwing extremist paranoia and leading to further stockpiling activity. Both rightwing extremists and law-abiding citizens share a belief that rising crime rates attributed to a slumping economy make the purchase of legitimate firearms a wise move at this time.
Weapons rights and gun-control legislation are likely to be hotly contested subjects of political debate in light of the 2008 Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller in which the Court reaffirmed an individual’s right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but left open to debate the precise contours of that right. Because debates over constitutional rights are intense, and parties on all sides have deeply held, sincere, but vastly divergent beliefs, violent extremists may attempt to co-opt the debate and use the controversy as a radicalization tool.
Perceived Threat from Rise of Other Countries —
Rightwing extremist paranoia of foreign regimes could escalate or be magnified in the event of an economic crisis or military confrontation, harkening back to the “New World Order” conspiracy theories of the 1990s. The dissolution of Communist countries in Eastern Europe and the end of the Soviet Union in the 1990s led some rightwing extremists to believe that a “New World Order” would bring about a world government that would usurp the sovereignty of the United States and its Constitution, thus infringing upon their liberty. The dynamics in 2009 are somewhat similar, as other countries, including China, India, and Russia, as well as some smaller, oil-producing states, are experiencing a rise in economic power and influence.
— Fear of Communist regimes and related conspiracy theories characterizing the U.S. Government’s role as either complicit in a foreign invasion or acquiescing as part of a “One World Government” plan inspired
extremist members of the militia movement to target government and military facilities in past years.
— Law enforcement in 1996 arrested three rightwing militia members in Battle Creek, Michigan with pipe bombs, automatic weapons, and military ordnance that they planned to use in attacks on nearby military and federal facilities and infrastructure targets.
— Rightwing extremist views bemoan the decline of U.S. stature and have recently focused on themes such as the loss of U.S. manufacturing capability to China and India, Russia’s control of energy resources and use of these to pressure other countries, and China’s investment in U.S. real estate and corporations as a part of subversion strategy.
Disgruntled Military Veterans —
DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists—including lone wolves or small terrorist cells—to carry out
violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.
— After Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, some returning military veterans—including Timothy McVeigh—joined or associated with rightwing extremist groups.
— A prominent civil rights organization reported in 2006 that “large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the [U.S.] armed forces.”
— The FBI noted in a 2008 report on the white supremacist movement that some returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined extremist groups.
Outlook —
DHS/I&A assesses that the combination of environmental factors that echo the 1990s, including heightened interest in legislation for tighter firearms restrictions and returning military veterans, as well as several new trends, including an uncertain economy and a perceived rising influence of other countries, may be invigorating
rightwing extremist activity, specifically the white supremacist and militia movements. To the extent that these factors persist, rightwing extremism is likely to grow in strength.
Unlike the earlier period, the advent of the Internet and other informationage technologies since the 1990s has given domestic extremists greater access to information related to bomb-making, weapons training, and tactics, as well as targeting of individuals, organizations, and facilities, potentially making extremist individuals and
groups more dangerous and the consequences of their violence more severe. New technologies also permit domestic extremists to send and receive encrypted communications and to network with other extremists throughout the country and abroad, making it much more difficult for law enforcement to deter, prevent, or preempt a violent extremist attack.
A number of law enforcement actions and external factors were effective in limiting the militia movement during the 1990s and could be utilized in today’s climate.
Following the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, the militia movement declined in total membership and in the number of organized groups because many members distanced
themselves from the movement as a result of the intense scrutiny militias received after the bombing.
— Militia membership continued to decline after the turn of the millennium as a result of law enforcement disruptions of multiple terrorist plots linked to violent rightwing extremists, new legislation banning paramilitary training, and militia frustration that the “revolution” never materialized.
— Although the U.S. economy experienced a significant recovery and many perceived a concomitant rise in U.S. standing in the world, white supremacist groups continued to experience slight growth.
DHS/I&A will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months to ascertain with greater regional specificity the rise in rightwing extremist activity in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the political, economic, and social factors that drive rightwing extremist radicalization.
Today, June 19, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced on Twitter that he had just signed a Resolution asserting Texas state sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment over all powers not granted to the federal government by the US Constitution. The Resolution officially notifies the President and Congress to cease acts that encroach upon the powers of the States.
No further information was given about the Resolution, what it actually states, its force, or how far Texas intends to take it.
But what if….
What if Texas is really willing serious about stopping federal over-reach and encroachment into its sovereign powers and what if she is really willing to fight this time for that sovereignty? What if the Tenth Amendment really does matter to Texas? And what if she can convince other states to join with her?
The Tenth Amendment is a critical amendment. It reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the People.” To be more exact, the Tenth Amendment is n restatement of the fundamental nature of our government system – the division of sovereign power between the States and the federal government, which is also known as “federalism.” The Preamble to the Bill of Rights makes this clear (as well as gives the reason for the Bill of Rights): “The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratoryand restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.
Since there wasn’t any additional information that I could find regarding the Resolution Governor Abbott referred to, I did some digging into what the Texas legislature has been doing. As it turns out, Senate Concurrent Resolution (SCR) 12, a resolution “to claim sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment” was filed in the Texas legislature on February 12 of this year by state Senator Brandon Creighton (R). State representative Phil King (R) filed a House Concurrent Resolution alongside Creighton’s, to allow passage of the measure in both chambers of the Texas legislature.
Senator Creighton’s Concurrent Resolution aims to not just “claim sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment” but to, “serve as notice and demand that the federal government, as our agent, halt and reverse, effective immediately, its practice of assuming powers and imposing mandates and laws upon the states for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution of the United States of America.” Additionally, the Resolution asks that “all compulsory federal legislation NOT necessary to ensure rights guaranteed the people under the Constitution of the United States that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited and repealed.”
Furthermore, SCR12 requests that the federal government stop “assuming powers and imposing mandates and laws upon the States for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution of the United States of America.” [You can read the entire text of the Senate Concurrent Resolution, SCR12 below, in the Addendum].
As defined in the Texas Legislative Glossary, “a concurrent resolution is used to convey the sentiment of the legislature and may offer a commendation, a memorial, a statement of congratulations, a welcome, or a request for action by another governmental entity.
In an article by Suzaenne Weiss (“Sovereignty Measures and Other Steps May Indicate an Upsurge iin Anti-Federal Sentiment in Legislatures”), she writes:
“Discontent over federal mandates in areas ranging from health care to gun control to national security is fueling a states’ rights revival in legislatures across the country.
In 2009, formal protests against federal encroachment on states’ authority and prerogatives under the Tenth Amendment—in the form of sovereignty resolutions or memorials—were considered by legislators in 37 states. Although many of them never made it out of committee or failed on initial floor votes, roughly half were approved in at least one legislative chamber. And in seven states—Alaska, Idaho, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Tennessee—the measures passed in both the House and Senate.
Some examples include:
Since 2007, more than two dozen states have passed resolutions or laws denouncing and refusing to implement the federal REAL ID Act, which imposes rigorous security, authentication and issuance standards for driver’s licenses and state ID cards.
Fourteen states have asserted their right—through legislation or voter-approved initiatives—to permit and control the medicinal use of marijuana.
Montana and Tennessee in 2009 enacted legislation declaring that firearms and ammunition manufactured, sold and used within their borders are not subject to federal regulations and taxes. Similar measures have been introduced in Florida, South Carolina, Texas and several other states over the past year.
The Arizona Legislature recently voted to place a referendum on the fall 2010 ballot that would guarantee the state’s residents the right to opt out of ‘any potential national health-care system.’
In Moncrief’s view, the growth of the state sovereignty movement over the past several years is attributable in large part to the Internet, which has facilitated efforts on the part of conservatives to force issues out of Washington and into states, where they might have a better chance of winning them.
Oklahoma’s resolution, for example, declares that ‘many federal laws are in direct violation of the 10th Amendment,” effectively “commandeering the legislative and regulatory processes of the states.’ It demands prohibition or repeal of mandates that come without adequate federal funding and/or require states to comply under threat of penalties or sanctions.
In Tennessee, the sovereignty resolution approved by legislators, and subsequently signed by Governor Phil Bredesen, calls for creating a joint working group of states ‘to enumerate the abuses of authority by the federal government and to seek repeal of the assumption of powers and the imposed mandates.’ New Hampshire’s resolution, which was voted down in March 2009, went so far as to lay out a variant of the 19th century “doctrine of nullification,” which holds that states have the right to declare null and void any federal laws they deem unconstitutional.”
It is also worth noting that just barely 3 weeks after President Biden assumed office, not only was the State Sovereignty Concurrent Resolution introduced, but a bill (not just a resolution) was also introduced calling for the secession of Texas. The bill (HB 1359), filed by state Representative Kyle Biedermann (R), calls for the re-creation of Texas as an independent republic.
The bottom line is that if the States are willing to have a backbone, if they are willing to re-assert their rights and powers under the Tenth Amendment, and if there’s widespread support, people can resist the federal government at the state level.
WHEREAS, Each member of the legislature has sworn a solemn oath to defend our United States and Texas Constitutions and takesgreat pride in being a citizen of the United States of America,where citizens have the right to petition their government forredress of grievances; and
WHEREAS, Section 1, Article I, Texas Constitution, states that “the perpetuity of the Union depend[s] upon the preservation of the right of local self-government, unimpaired to all the States”; Section 2, Article I, declares, “All political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their benefit. The faith of the people of Texas stands pledged to the preservation of a republican form of government, and, subject to this limitation only, they have at all times the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may think expedient”; and
WHEREAS, The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America reads as follows: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”; and
WHEREAS, The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the U.S. Constitution and no more; and
WHEREAS, The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states with powers both limited and enumerated; and
WHEREAS, Today, in 2021, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government; and
WHEREAS, Many powers assumed by the federal government as well as federal laws and mandates are in direct violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America; and
WHEREAS, The Tenth Amendment assures that we, the people of the United States of America and each sovereign state in the Union of States, have always had rights that the federal government may not usurp; and
WHEREAS, Section 4, Article IV, of the United States Constitution says, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” and the Ninth Amendment states, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”; and
WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and
WHEREAS, A number of proposals from previous administrations, as well as from Congress, may further violate the Constitution of the United States of America; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the 87th Legislature of the State of Texas hereby claim sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States of America; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That this serve as notice and demand that the federal government, as our agent, halt and reverse, effective immediately, its practice of assuming powers and imposing mandates and laws upon the states for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution of the United States of America; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That all compulsory federal legislation not necessary to ensure rights guaranteed the people under the Constitution of the United States that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited and repealed; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress, and to all members of the Texas delegation to Congress with the request that this resolution be officially entered in the Congressional Record as a memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.
II. A SAMPLE “TENTH AMENDMENT RESOLUTION” (from the Tenth Amendment Center, with some of my own additions)
The following is a sample 10th Amendment House Concurrent Resolution approved by the Tenth Amendment Center. Activists, we encourage you to send this to your state senators and representatives – and ask them to introduce this resolution in your state.
A RESOLUTION affirming the sovereignty of the People of the State of _________.
WHEREAS, in the American system, sovereignty is defined as final authority, and the People, not government, are sovereign; and
WHEREAS, the people of the State of __________ are not united with the People of the other forty-nine states that comprise the United States of America on a principle of unlimited submission to their federal government; and
WHEREAS, all power not delegated by the people to government is retained; and
WHEREAS, the People of the several States comprising the United States of America created the federal government to be their agent for certain enumerated purposes only (that is, to carry out functions common to them) and intended that it enjoys no more power than that granted to it by the Constitution; and
WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people;” and
WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that which has been expressly delegated BY THE PEOPLE (through their State Conventions) to the federal government in the Constitution of the United States, and also any incidental powers which may be absolutely necessary and proper to carry into execution those enumerated powers; with the rest being left to state governments or the people themselves; and
WHEREAS, In Federalist No. 45, James Madison explained: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
WHEREAS, States acting under the authority granted to them by the Tenth Amendment have the ability to create innovative policy strategies that accommodate the unique needs, cultural traditions, and priorities of their jurisdictions; and
WHEREAS, recognizing the critical role that States play as fifty independent laboratories of democracy, innovation, solutions, and modern laws, the encroaching upon the sovereign powers of the States guaranteed and restated by the Tenth Amendment by the federal government threatens that essential role; and
WHEREAS, State governments are experiencing unprecedented shortfalls in revenue and are generally bound by constitutionally-balanced budget requirements, thereby struggling to pay for their own policies and programs, while the federal government taxes unconstitutionally the People in order to then turn around and “award” states various grants (which come with federal “conditions”); the government is unconstitutionally doing an end-run around the Constitution with this system; and
WHEREAS, powers, too numerous to list for the purposes of this resolution, have been exercised, past and present, by federal administrations, under the leadership of both Democrats and Republicans, which infringe on the sovereignty of the people of this state, and may further violate the Constitution of the United States; and
WHERERAS, despite the fiscal position of states and the articulated intent of the Tenth Amendment, the federal government continues to impose unfunded mandates and continues to pre-empt state sovereignty, treating the States as nothing more than agents of the federal government (rather than the reverse)
WHEREAS, when powers are assumed by the federal government which have not been delegated to it by the People, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy; that without this remedy, the People of this State would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.
NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE _____ OF THE _______ GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ______, WITH THE SENATE
CONCURRING, that we hereby affirm the sovereignty of the People of the State of _______ under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise delegated to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States; and, be it further
RESOLVED, that this Resolution shall serve as a Notice and Demand to the federal government to cease and desist any and all activities outside the scope of their constitutionally-delegated powers; and, it be further
RESOLVED, that a committee of conference be appointed by this legislature, which shall have as its charge to recommend and propose legislation which would have the effect of nullifying specific federal laws and regulations which are outside the scope of the powers delegated by the People to the federal government in the Constitution; and, be it further
RESOLVED, that a committee of correspondence be appointed, which shall have as its charge to communicate the preceding resolutions to the Legislatures of the several States; to assure them that this State continues in the same esteem of their friendship as currently exists; that it considers union, for specified national purposes, and particularly those enumerated in the Constitution of the United States, to be friendly to the peace, happiness and prosperity of all the States; and, be it further
RESOLVED, that a certified copy of this resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker and the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives, and to each member of this State’s Congressional delegation with the request that this resolution be officially entered in the Congressional Record as a memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.
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