The Hatred Spewed by Grayson

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

The problem of racial bigotry stems primarily from voluntary ignorance and intentional stupidity. It is the coward who seizes on our differences as a people to divide us for their own sick needs and political purposes.

It is one thing when an imbecile like Kanye West makes statements that the reason New Orleans suffered as it did post-Katrina was because President George W. Bush hated black folks.

That sort of asinine comment can be easily dismissed for the lack of intellectual heft it shows.

It is another situation, one that should concern the electorate, when a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives chooses to spew hatred and ignorance and many take him seriously.

The media derision that has been pointed in the Congressman’s’ direction was muted, but what was commented upon opted out of presenting the facts.

Truth is always a proper response to hatred and stupidity.

Before presenting a compendium of media stories on the subject at hand, a refresher course in some specific facts of United States history.

The President who fought and won the Civil War, the president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation was Abraham Lincoln.

He was a Republican.

The rise of the Ku Klux Klan during the post Civil War era of Reconstruction was engineered by southerners who did not want equality in any manner for the former slaves.

The Klan was a creation of Southern Democrats.

The West Virginia Senator who served for 51 years and was lauded as a giant in Senate history was Robert Byrd.

He was a Democrat.

He was a member of the Klan.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation that attempted to resolve many of the issues related to segregation. A recap of the voting on that law might be in order:

The bill was voted on by 420 members -- 290 in favor, 130 opposed. Republicans voted in favor 138-34, and Democrats voted 152-96 in support. Democrats from northern states voted in favor 141- 4 and southern-state Democrats opposed the bill 92-11.

The point here is that Republicans have a strong history supporting equal rights, and it is the Democrats who have the questionable past of race hatred.

Why is this information of consequence?

Consider the following collection of news stories about a current member of the House and his ignorance and his race hatred.

It is a lesson that the American people should well note.

To wit:

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) used an image of a burning cross in an email slamming the tea party, comparing groups involved in the movement to the Ku Klux Klan.

Grayson first made the comparison between the tea party and the KKK in an interview with MSNBC's Al Sharpton on Oct. 17.

"They want their money back and they want the tea party out of their lives," Grayson said. "At this point, the tea party is no more popular than the Klan."

Grayson is standing by his comparison.

"[T]here is overwhelming evidence that the Tea Party is the home of bigotry and discrimination in America today, just as the KKK was for an earlier generation," he said in a statement provided to HuffPost. "If the hood fits, wear it."

Grayson's comparison is not novel. Professors Matt Barretto and Christopher Parker  make a similar case. "The authors argue that this isn't the first time a segment of American society has perceived the American way of life as under siege," the book's blurb reads. "In fact, movements of this kind often appear when some individuals believe that 'American' values are under threat by rapid social changes. Drawing connections between the Tea Party and right-wing reactionary movements of the past, including the Ku Klux Klan, Parker and Barreto develop a framework that transcends the Tea Party to shed light on its current and future consequences.

.Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) continued to stand by his recent comparison of the tea party to the Ku Klux Klan on Friday, during an MSNBC interview that ended with him accusing host Martin Bashir of "collaborating" with the conservative movement and its alleged racism.

Grayson began by defending a fundraising email that included an image of a burning cross that formed the "t" in "tea party." When Bashir pushed back, suggesting that Grayson may have taken his analogy too far, especially considering that the tea party hasn't actually lynched anybody, the outspoken Florida Democrat turned on the host.

“Do you think that racism is the same as calling out racism? Do you think that my effort to end racism in America is somehow analogous to racism itself? That’s ridiculous,” Grayson shot back at Bashir, who has himself made a habit of attacking the tea party for racially motivated attacks on President Barack Obama.

Grayson then suggested that Bashir was complicit in the tea party's supposed racism, in part because he'd questioned the appropriateness of the congressman's campaign email.

“The point I’m making is that if you don’t speak out against it, then in effect, you’re collaborating with it,” he said. “And, in fact, if you give someone like me a hard time for speaking out against it, then maybe you’re collaborating with it.”

Representative Alan Grayson should consider another line of work.

Terrorism in Libya & Egypt

The Obama administration has for the past week been stumbling over itself to demonstrate just how well they are equipped for providing self inflicted diplomatic wounds with the American people and our allies worldwide. They seem to have forgotten the classic guidelines of incompetence: the American people will forgive the mistake; it is the cover-up that does a politician in.

The mass media has for that time been their more than willing sycophantic accomplices.

The September 11^th attacks this year were to even the most marginally intelligent sentient being an orchestrated terrorist attack. Spontaneous mobs upset with an online, little seen video do not protest en masse with grenade launchers  and a detailed plan to capture and assassinate a United States ambassador.

Yet the continual stream of blathering idiocy continues to be that the actions taken in Egypt and Libya were merely Moslems upset with a video.

Secretary of State Clinton this week finally acknowledged the obvious, as did White House press secretary Carney, yet the President continues to assert his belief of the proven fraudulent premise of the video as being the cause of the unrest.

What has gone unacknowledged by the administration and their media sycophants however, is the source of these terrorist attacks.

To wit:

All such acts are committed by anarchists, cowards - in a word, terrorists.

Terrorists are not associated with any normal classification of ethnic, political or religious collectives.

Consider for a moment the reality of particular actions taken around the world in the last fifty years.

The American people must ask and answer these hard questions on certain types of events.

For example, was the September 15, 1963 bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which resulted in the death of four innocent black girls, committed by Americans upset with the Civil Rights movement, or were they simply cowardly terrorists that had no connection with America and the American people?

Was the slaughter of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich really carried out by ‘Palestinian’ terrorists, or rather by cold blooded murders intent on only their anarchistic political views?

In the strife of Northern Ireland, was it really Christian’s against Protestants, and vice versa, bombing children, women, to achieve freedom for a group of people? Or was it the acts of hateful ignorant people with no allegiances to the people they professed to want to help?

Do true Christians, Protestants, Catholics really promote the death of innocents? Do any of those religions accept such actions as means to an end, especially a political one?

Do Americans actually allow the premise to perpetuate that true followers of Islam are accepting of the death of 3,000 Americans on September 11^th, 2001?

Do American condone the murders of abortion doctors as merely the acts of Christian extremists, or do Americans consider murder to be murder?

This is one of the dangerous aspects of what are euphemistically labeled as ‘hate crimes’. It attaches connection by presumed thought to a group of people who actually have no belief in the acts of cowardice and terror.

Was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 the act of a white ex-military Christian who simply had only minor disagreements with governmental policy, or was Tim McVeigh merely an evil murderer?

This nation must cease branding acts of terror as being carried out by ‘Islamic extremists’ or even ‘Islamic terrorists’

Followers of Islam cannot be terrorists any more than Jews or Christians can be terrorists. Adherence to their faiths precludes such acts of terror.

For those who may consider the Koran a document of hate, please consider a literal reading of the Bible would demonstrate the ‘eye for an eye’ philosophy. Most religious people do not take such teachings literally.

This nation must not attribute acts of cowardice and hate as religious acts of zealotry in any context.

Terrorism is terrorism, perpetrated by evil people with no greater intent than to perpetrate evil.

It is just that simple.

Hate

The fundamental rights guaranteed under the United States Constitution are under assault and the electorate at large is aiding and abetting that fact by a woeful lack of understanding on what their rights truly are. The Constitution was written and enacted to limit the power of the government and to guarantee the citizens the right to free expression, be it by speech or publication.

In the name of ignorance and fear, those precious rights are being surrendered under the guise of tolerance.

The terms ‘hate crime’ and ‘hate speech’ have become part of the accepted lexicon of the self described but self delusional ‘enlightened’ political class. The support of these terms is in fact nothing more than ignorance run amok and the American people must stand firm against this sacrificing of their rights.

Consider exactly what has happened under the guise of ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crime’.

“Hate speech’ is currently the accepted vernacular to dismiss unpopular points of view. If a citizen of any status takes an unpopular position on a political class and accompanying media flacks sacred cow, they are not debated on the merits; they are labeled as purveyors of hate speech. This is nothing more than intimidation and low level thuggery. It exposes the lack of intellectual heft by those who choose to inject fear and hatred into the discourse of the body politic. Hate by definition goes to an internal mental process; labeling speech as hate goes to the arrogance of declaring that ones knows the working of another’s mind. It also signals to those who would defend the minority opinion from doing so, lest they find themselves tarred and feathered by ignorance. Free speech is a basic tenet of American democracy and in the name of political correctness it is being sacrificed on the altar of ignorance. The question begs to be asked; how soon until there is no longer any dissent in the national discourse, lest it be deemed to be hate speech. The arena of ideas is indeed a fierce competition, but it must be fought amongst equals, not the lions against the Christians.

The even more alarming precedent being set is that of ‘hate crime’. The act itself is apparently not enough to warrant sufficient punishment; the government has now decided that if it can show ones mental intent, there will be additional punishment levied.

In short, thought itself is sufficient grounds for additional punishment. The narrow minded and ignorant amongst the electorate feel that there is some manner of justice is labeling crimes as “hate’ crimes.

Is there such a thing as a loving or friendly crime? We should look instead to increasing the punishments for crime and remove the governmental thought police from being involved in the prosecutorial process. How soon will it be until those in authority will add “hate” to any legal infraction solely in order to breed fear amongst the population?

This is not mere rhetoric; every tyrannical government in history has sowed its seeds of gaining power by first creating fear of prosecution against some manner of societal undesirable.

The American people must thwart this attempt of circumventing the Constitution for short term political correctness. The framers and the founders entrusted us with the responsibility of defending our freedoms; we must not betray that trust, or surely our ancestors and our posterity will never forgive our collective cowardice.