Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy (of whom I\u2019ve neither written nor said a word until now) was treated as a hero, even a living emblem of the Spirit of the Patriots of \u201976, by Sean Hannity and many other self-avowed \u201cconservatives\u201d until just a week or so ago.<\/p>\n
But it only took a few seconds and a few syllables for this praise to give way to scorn as the inarticulate, media-ignorant Bundy openly contended that far too many blacks today are living under conditions that, in some respects, are far worse than those under which their ancestors were made to live during slavery.<\/p>\n
Bundy relayed his thoughts upon driving past a Nevada housing project\u2014\u201cthat government house\u201d\u2014and witnessing considerable numbers of blacks just hanging around.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThey didn\u2019t have nothing for their kids to do,\u201d Bundy says.\u00a0 \u201cThey didn\u2019t have nothing for their young girls to do.\u201d\u00a0 This, according to Bundy, is because of the \u201cgovernment subsidy\u201d upon which they depend.<\/p>\n
It is this \u201cgovernment subsidy\u201d that explains why Bundy finds himself wondering at times whether blacks today may not actually \u201cgot less freedom\u201d than blacks had under slavery.\u00a0 This \u201cgovernment subsidy\u201d accounts for why they \u201cabort their young children\u201d and \u201cput their young men in jail [.]\u201d\u00a0 Contemporary blacks have some of the troubles that they do \u201cbecause they never learned how to pick cotton.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reaction to Bundy on the part of his Republican supporters-turned-opponents speaks volumes about the state of the \u201cconservative\u201d movement.<\/p>\n
And things are not looking good.<\/p>\n
The only difference between Bundy and his Republican critics is that the former lacks both the articulation and media savvy of the latter.\u00a0 Substantively speaking, his position on race is indistinguishable from that which the GOP has been advancing for decades: the social pathology that characterizes the contemporary black lower and underclasses, we are forever being assured, is the product of the oppressive policies of the Democratic Party, policies that substitute a new \u201cplantation,\u201d so to speak, for the slave plantations of old.<\/p>\n
Clearly, when Republicans describe black Republicans as having left behind \u201cthe plantation,\u201d the intellectual and moral plantation created by the Democratic Party, they mean to imply exactly Bundy\u2019s point: Democrats have imposed upon blacks a form of slavery that, in many ways, is at least as bad, if not worse, than that under which blacks labored for centuries.<\/p>\n
Anyone who can\u2019t see that Bundy was most definitely not lamenting the old days when blacks picked cotton is either dense or dishonest.\u00a0 It is clear that what he was saying, or trying to say, is that, unlike their ancestors, far too many contemporary blacks, particularly among the youth\u2014the products of the modern Welfare State\u2014lack a work ethic.<\/p>\n
For the record, I don\u2019t buy this nonsense, but the painful truth is that it is nonsense that Republicans<\/i>\u2014forever desperate to out-Democrat the Democrats by pushing the cult of black Victimhood\u2014have been peddling for years and years before Bundy (inadvertently, for sure) made their reasoning explicit.<\/p>\n
Republican \u201cconservatives\u201d reveal themselves as crass, opportunistic panderers when they at one and the same moment talk the talk of liberty and individual responsibility while promoting the fiction of political determinism when it comes to accounting for the scandalous degree of pathological conduct found within black communities throughout the country.\u00a0 To hear these Republicans (and Cliven Bundy) tell it, the astronomical rates of abortion, illegitimacy, crime, academic failure, unemployment, poverty, incarceration, etc. among blacks are the fault of Democrats.\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n
Again, this notion is absurd.\u00a0 And it flatly contradicts the \u201cindividualism\u201d for which Republicans claim <\/i>to stand, for it serves to strengthen the ideology of minority Victimhood to which they\u2019re supposed to be opposed.\u00a0 Just as individual blacks, and no one else, deserve credit for their good deeds and virtues, so individual blacks, and no one else, deserve condemnation for their evil deeds and vices.<\/p>\n
But the point is that if Bundy is \u201cracist\u201d for his remarks, then Republicans are \u201cracist\u201d for pushing the same line.\u00a0 If the latter aren\u2019t \u201cracist,\u201d but just idiotic and\/or dishonest, as I believe, then Bundy too is guilty of the same character weaknesses.<\/p>\n
Republicans would be well served to heed Christ\u2019s admonition to remove the boulder from their own eyes before proceeding to pluck out the pebble from the eyes of their neighbors.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy (of whom I\u2019ve neither written nor said a word until now) was treated as a hero, even a living emblem of the Spirit of the Patriots of \u201976, by Sean Hannity and many other self-avowed \u201cconservatives\u201d until just a week or so ago. But it only took a few seconds and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n