by Paul R. Hollrah, LHI Contributor
It is long past time that African-Americans did a bit of soul-searching on where they stand, politically, and what's in their best interests for the future.
Let's start with a little "pop quiz." I wonder how many black children could correctly answer the following three questions:
1. Who was the first African-American member of the United States Senate?
2. Who was the second African-American member of the United States Senate and the
first to serve a full term?
3. Who was the third African-American member of the United States Senate and the
first elected by popular vote?
The answer to the first question is Hiram Rhoades Revels, a minister and educator from
the State of Mississippi. Revels was a Republican appointed to fill the unexpired term of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America.
The answer to the second question is Blanche Kelso Bruce. Bruce was a Mississippi Republican who served from March 1875 until March 1881.
The answer to the final question is Ed Brooke. Brooke was a Massachusetts Republican who served two terms in the Senate, from January 1967 until January 1979.
So what's the point of this little quiz? The point is that black children in America would never suspect that the first three African-Americans to serve in the United States Senate were Republicans. Why? Because liberals and Democrats simply don't want them to have that information. It isn't "politically correct." In order for liberals to keep black people casting 90-95 percent of their votes for Democratic candidates, they can't allow young blacks to know that African-American politics is rooted in the Republican Party.
But is it really worth our time to worry about that? Is it even Fahrenheit 9/11 Fails the Truth Test
By Frances Rice
Michael Moore, a Democrat, can't swear under oath that his "mocumentary" film, Fahrenheit 9/11, is true. Newsweek magazine investigated Mr. Moore's movie and found that the movie contains major falsehoods.
Mr. Moore claims that Saudi Arabia gave $1.4 billion to companies connected to President George W. Bush. That is false. Most of that money, $1.18 billion of it, was earned in the early 1990's by a U.S. defense contractor, BDM, from contracts with the Saudi Arabian government for training their military and National Guard. A false "Bush" connection was cooked up by Mr. Moore because BMD was owned by the Carlyle Group whose advisory board once included the president's father, George H.W. Bush. But, former President George H.W. Bush didn't join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998 -- five months after the Carlyle Group had already sold BDM to another defense company. The current President George W. Bush was once a member of the Carlyle Group's board, but he quit to run for governor of Texas a few months before the first Saudi contracts were awarded to BDM.
The Carlyle Group is not a "Bush Inc," as claimed by Mr. Moore. In fact the Carlyle Group board includes a bipartisan group of Washington, DC power players. The founding and still managing partner of the Carlyle Group is Howard Rubenstein, a former top domestic policy advisor to former President Jimmy Carter. Senior advisors of the Carlyle Group include Thomas "Mack" McLarty, former President Bill Clinton's former White House chief of staff, and Arthur Levitt, President Clinton's former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. A key managing partner is William Cannard, President Clinton's former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
Michael Moore's movie fails to offer any evidence that President Bush did anything to help the Carlyle Group while in the White House. In fact, the one major Bush administration decision that affected the Carlyle Group was the cancellation of a $11 billion program for the Crusader rocket artillery system. The Crusader was manufactured by a company owned by the Carlyle Group, United Defense, until it sold that company in October, 2001. The Carlyle Group still owned 47 percent of United Defense in 2002 when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld canceled the Crusader program.
Another major falsehood in Mr. Moore's film involves his claims about the Saudis who were flown out of the United States after the September 11 terror attacks. The 9/11 commission found that the FBI screened the Saudi passengers, ran their names through federal databases, interviewed 30 of the passengers and asked many of them "detailed questions." The commission stated that "Nobody of interest to the FBI with regard to the 9/11 investigation was allowed to leave the country." The person in the White House who approved the flights for the Saudis wasn't President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. No, it was Richard Clarke, the counter-terrorism czar who was a holdover from the Clinton administration. Mr. Clarke has testified that he gave the approval for the Saudis to depart the United States conditioned on FBI clearance. possible that blacks might actually take a look at their "hole card" and decide that fidelity to the Democratic Party hasn't really gotten them much? Absolutely. Because they represent the crucial swing vote in American politics, the future of our country is tied very closely to the decisions that African-Americans make in the privacy of the voting booth, and now is the time for that reevaluation. With a major "assist" from comedian Bill Cosby, the floor is now open for discussion.
In a recent speech at Constitution Hall in Washington, DC, Cosby roundly criticized black parents for not doing a proper job of parenting. He said, "These people are not parenting. They're buying $500 sneakers, for what? And they won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.' They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is'… and I blamed the kid until I heard the mother… and the father talk. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads… You can't be a doctor with
that kind of crap coming out of your mouth."
According to columnist Star Parker, "One can only imagine the gasps throughout an audience for whom being black is not only a condition, but also a profession. These are folks who have built careers finding explanations for every black social malady – except the irresponsible behavior of individuals themselves.
"The premise that being born black and poor in America is a dead end has defined black politics for the last half century. Black political careers have been built on peddling the message that the American dream is a white dream and that the only way blacks have a prayer of making it in America is through government intervention."
But now comes a book that may change the entire political landscape. The Rev. Wayne Perryman has written a book, titled Unfounded Loyalty, which explores the "longstanding love affair" between African-Americans and the Democratic Party. If we can somehow get blacks, especially black children, to read Perryman's thoroughly researched book, it could be one of the three most important works of non-fiction published since the Civil War. In fact, if Republicans are searching for the most effective way to spend their money, they'll begin purchasing large quantities of Perryman's book and distributing them to schools and libraries all across the country.
The lie that professional blacks and Democrats have been peddling is just that… a lie. We can only hope that African-Americans in large numbers will one day come to see the truth of Cosby's words. And if African-American parents will read Rev. Perryman's book, and make their children read it as well, Kweise Mfume, Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, and all the other black oppressors had better stand aside. If they don't, they'll be trampled in the stampede.
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