Nov 6, 2017 | Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
The CIA showed total contempt of both Congress and the President by not releasing ALL documents in their possession dealing with the Kennedy Assassination November 25, 2017, even when ordered to do so by Donald Trump himself. Trump compromised by giving them an additional six months to comply.
The intensity of long-term CIA defiance says two things. One, what the CIA knows is far worse than likely imagined. Second, if they are allowed redaction for six months what else might they redact, and how would we know? If they feel this strongly about not disclosing after 54 years, we will never know from them what they do not want known. Remember from the beginning the CIA has been implicated in the assassination.
But scholars have already weighed in on the Kennedy assassination so we do not have to wait for the CIA to release their filtered documents. This is what we know.
The government’s inscription on the wall of the Texas School Book Depository reads: “On November 22, 1963, The building gained national notoriety when Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot and killed President John F. Kennedy from a sixth story window as the Presidential motorcade passed.” The word allegedly is an admission that the government remains uncertain, beyond doubt, that Oswald did the deed or acted alone.
Most scholars on the assassination view the Warren Commission’s review of the data with great skepticism (some with contempt) especially in light of its numerous omissions, as for example the testimony of Dr. Charles Crenshaw who placed Kennedy in the coffin at Parkland Hospital and testified years later that the neck wound had been tampered with to look like an exit rather than an entry wound. An entry wound would have proved more than a single assassin and provoked more investigation.
In 1976 The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded: “President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” Congress themselves used the word conspiracy. They, like the Warren Commission, did their investigation mostly in secret. Unbelievably they too sealed their evidence for 50 years under Congressional rules.
As the years fly by and from the hundreds of new books on the subject, it is increasingly more difficult to dismiss, as an accomplice, Lyndon Baines Johnson and his CIA/FBI friends. Newer historians are not as willing to give him a free pass on the subject.
My journalist friend, Don Clark, has personally read most of the 2000 books on the subject and is a noted speaker on the assassination. He told an audience in San Francisco that while the government has not, or will not, pursue the subject private investigators have done so and we do not have to wait for the sealed records. What follows are his “must reads” on the subject:
First, get the directors cut of the motion picture JFK by Oliver Stone. Despite the profanity the “movie contains more spoken words, more script, than any film in history.”
Second, On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison (a former FBI agent) treats Oswald’s time in New Orleans and four government agents identified as “handlers” that seemed to “shadow” him.
Third, read JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. A stunning piece of original research published in 2008, by James Douglass.
Fourth, read MARY’S MOSAIC: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace, by Peter Janney. The work published in 2012 found that the author’s own “CIA father, was among the conspirators orchestrating the deaths of Kennedy and his friend Mary Pinchot Meyer. The latter’s death is also “in a veiled way” in the recent movie, An American Affair.
Fifth, read JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, by Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who served at the time of Kennedy’s death, as the key liaison between the Pentagon and the CIA.
Sixth, tying together many loose ends the following three books will help. Revealing the secret links between the most powerful law firm in Texas and the criminal rise to power of Lyndon Johnson is Blood, Money, & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK, by Barr McClellan. LBJ: Mastermind of the JFK Assassination, by Phillip Nelson. Texas in the Morning, by Lyndon Johnson’s long-time mistress, Madeline Duncan Brown “takes you to the meeting the night before the assassination. She shares the story of Lyndon Johnson coming late to the meeting, then emerging in a fury, grabbing her by the arms so hard it hurt, and swearing in a rage, ‘After tomorrow, those goddamn Kennedy’s will never embarrass me again—and that’s not a threat, that’s a promise!’”
In light of decades of intensive reading, Clark poses the question, “Was it devious, desperate Lyndon Johnson, the viper in the nest, the Brutus to Kennedy’s Caesar, had blackmailed his way onto the 1960 presidential ticket, who knew he was about to be dumped from the 1964 ticket, who knew he was about to be indicted and probably go to prison for his probable role in the Bobby Baker and Billy Sol Estes scandals, whose lifelong lust and endless scheming for the presidency would stop at nothing to get to that office, least of all murder?” Perhaps it is time to speak the unspeakable.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Oct 30, 2017 | Constitution, Economy, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease Ph. D
“The Environmental Protection Agency shall terminate on December 31, 2018.” This one sentence, proposed law H.R. 861, is probably the shortest and most direct ever proposed in U.S. History. It was introduced by Rep. Matt Gaetz February 3, and is presently working its way through four committees: Agriculture, Energy and Commerce, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Science, Space, and Technology. If passed it will save taxpayers over eight billion dollars a year and send over 15,000 employees looking for new jobs.
Congressman Gaetz wrote defending his bill, “Our small businesses cannot afford to cover the costs associated with compliance, too often leading to closed doors and unemployed Americans. It is time to take back our legislative power from the EPA and abolish it permanently.”
But those who oppose the bill, like hornets swarming out of a disturbed hornets nest, are those who benefit from the Agency, the 15,000 with its passage soon to be looking for new jobs, profiting corporations, Hollywood activists, and big government advocates both Democrat and Republican—essentially the biggest donors in elections. A quick look on the Internet shows the hornets coming with every gun in the arsenal (even they believe in gun rights as long as they have all the guns), and they do, even the establishment media and socialized universities. Without huge public support career politicians will fold on this one.
Congressman Gaetz wrote, “states and local communities are best positioned to responsibly regulate the environmental assets within their jurisdictions.” He is right but he has a stronger argument, the Constitution does not list (Article I, Section 8) the environment as a federal function of government. By not being listed, it automatically remains a state, county and city prerogative (Amendment 10). If environmentalists want such power they must use Amendment V, which requires any new power to get 3/4ths of the state conventions to move the power from the states to the federal government so that it can be listed with the other federal powers.
Power grabbers, of both major political parties, do not like these parts of the Constitution because they rightfully do not allow them to do anything they wish. Moreover, the EPA was never enacted by Congress as required in Article I, Section 1 “All legislative power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States….”, no exceptions. It was nothing more than an Executive Order penned by then Republican Richard Nixon, December 2, 1970.
Years ago in visiting with a local contractor I learned that his biggest obstacle in providing reasonably priced middleclass housing for the community was the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He told me that in a $300,000 home approximately one-third of that cost was fulfilling the myriad of rules that were mandated by this organization. He took time to share some of those with me. They were so unreasonable and without them I could have saved $100,000 on a new home. Without his willingness to go through these hoops there would be few single-family homes older than the sixties in this modest oil-town community.
He was a modest, unassuming good man, not the corporate polluter, toxic dumping and public land rapist that the extreme environmentalists portray developers. After five years of hearings battling the EPA over a single endangered flower that had popped up on his property next to a public park, he finally received permission to build.
Once construction workers, attempting to update an elementary school, found in a distant part of the schoolyard a kit fox den. All work stopped for at least six months while school authorities worked through the web of EPA rules before they could proceed. Costs mushroomed and human needs, even for children, were immediately placed on hold for an animal that locals knew was not really endangered. I used to tell my students that if they wanted an eye-opening experience just drive through the allies at night; they would see a kit fox before they saw a common cat.
The problem ended when those trying to get the school functioning again were allowed to purchase a kill permit. Yes, a kill permit, and the animal presumably protected because it was on an endangered list, was killed anyway. To obtain a kill permit the property owner is required to purchase land elsewhere, sometimes three times as large, next to a reserve and donate that property to the reserve. There is no attempt made to capture the offending animal or transplant the unwanted flower to another place. That would be too practical and reasonable for the government.
What I have shared is common knowledge to ninety percent of those over 30 and not associated with a college or university. Indeed, I have never met a defender of the EPA outside the latter category. Colleges are too often havens for teachers teaching, and students learning, that only the federal government can or will protect the environment and that states, counties or cities are too influenced by corporations and developers to do the job. The opposite is true. States have far more incentive in protecting their back yard than do unelected bureaucrats living 2,000 miles away that are not personally impacted by the rules they impose on others. The Constitution automatically protects us from these people if we will let it. Does your Congressman support H.R. 861?
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Oct 23, 2017 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
Harold Pease Ph. D
If the President does what he says he will do, as so far Trump has, Christians, and Christian values, can look forward to a new era of respect and value. President Trump gave two powerful, policy changing, addresses Friday, September 13, one to the Values Voters Conference, mostly Christian leaders, and the second refusing to recertify the Iran Nuclear Treaty, basically sending it back to the Senate for much needed improvement. The establishment news media, notably hostile in their coverage of Christian values, have essentially buried the first address by extensive coverage of the second.
Liberty Under Fire treats this topic as a constitutional issue because the Founding Fathers valued religion in government, protected religion by creating the 1st Amendment in the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution requires a moral people to be fully understood. And, as mentioned, the establishment news media won’t cover it because of its long-standing anti-religious bias.
The Founder best articulating the value of religion in government was President George Washington. In his Farewell Address as he left office after refusing a third term he advised. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? … reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
The list of demanded freedoms made conditional upon states ratifying the Constitution were listed in order of importance in the Bill of Rights. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Freedom of religion was listed first.
John Adams best articulated the need for a moral people to fully understand the Constitution when he wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Benjamin Franklin expressed a similar view, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom…. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
The following phrases in Trumps address to the Values Voters Conference are some of the most powerful to come from the lips of a president in our history and are in harmony with the Founding Fathers. “America is a nation of believers, and together we are strengthened and sustained by the power of prayer.” And later, “We know that the American family is the true bedrock of American life.”
“I pledged that, in a Trump administration, our nation’s religious heritage would be cherished, protected, and defended like you have never seen before.”
“Bureaucrats think they can run your lives, overrule your values, meddle in your faith, and tell you how to live, what to say, and how to pray. But we know that parents, not bureaucrats, know best how to raise their children and create a thriving society.”
“We know that it’s the family and the church, not government officials, that know best how to create strong and loving communities…. In America, we don’t worship government — we worship God.”
“We see it in the church communities that come together to care for one another, to pray for each other, and to stand strong with each other in times of need.” “We will pass on the blessings of liberty, and the glories of God, to our children.”
So what campaign promises on freedom of religion has he kept? “To protect the unborn, I have reinstated a policy first put in place by President Ronald Reagan, the Mexico City Policy.” This policy prohibits federal funding of organizations performing or promoting abortion as a method of family planning. Democratic presidents always reinstate it and Republican Presidents rescind it.
He issued an executive order “to prevent the horrendous Johnson Amendment from interfering with your First Amendment rights.” This Amendment prohibited tax-exempt organizations, churches and ministers included, from having a political voice in society. “We will not allow government workers to censor sermons or target our pastors or our ministers or rabbis. These are the people we want to hear from, and they’re not going to be silenced any longer.” The order resulted in the Department of Justice issuing “new guidance to all federal agencies to ensure that no religious group is ever targeted under my administration.”
“We have also taken action to protect the conscience rights of groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor…. we will not let bureaucrats take away that calling or take away their rights.”
So is Trump just following a script to insure he captures the religious community in 2020? He already has them because he has done more for this community than any president in distant memory. Moreover, as he pointed out in his address, he is “the first sitting President to address” the Values Voter Summit when not running for president, as the sitting president.
The words are perfect and should inspire confidence that in the difficult decisions that he may make, he will go first to his knees and be led by God. But will he? I would feel more comfortable if we saw him attend a church occasionally. Still, it is refreshing to have someone defend the religious community as too few before him have.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Oct 16, 2017 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Under the leadership of California Governor Jerry Brown and with governors Andrew Cuomo of New York, and Jay Inslee of Washington, complicit, the United States Climate Alliance was formed, an alliance of states committed to upholding the 2015 Paris Accord from which President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out and renegotiate. “California will resist,” Brown affirmed.
The United Nations deal/accord/agreement (whatever the name), but never called a treaty as this would actually bind agreeing countries, came about December 12, 2015, in Le Bourget, France where representatives of 195 countries assembled. Most agreed to lower greenhouse gas emissions believed to affect climate change. The arrangement attempts to bind signing countries beginning in 2020 to convene every five years with their plans to lowering emissions and reconvene again three years later with statistics on their new improved emission levels.
The problem is that despite the practice of not using the word treaty that began with Bill Clinton’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and GATT (General Agreement on Tariff and Trade), any deal/accord/agreement that has any expectation of accomplishing anything should be called a treaty and must be ratified by the U.S. Senate to be constitutional. Not using the word treaty means that participating nations simply had a discussion. Politicians cannot just change the word treaty to a synonym of treaty with the intent to thereby bypass the U.S. Senate, which body is responsible for all agreements with foreign nations, and thus the Constitution, to accomplish a binding purpose on this nation.
The Constitution gives the president “Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur… (Art. II, Sec. 2, Cla 2). No other term is used in the Constitution to describe an agreement between nations. Wordage created by the then Barrack Obama foreign policy team presented in a U.N. assemblage in Paris by then Secretary of State John Kerry, without either advice in forming the wordage or consent of the Senate thereafter, is a flagrant violation of the Constitution.
Trump should rescind the “understanding” in Paris on constitutional grounds alone. That the Republicans view the science of human caused climate change as unproved, and thus disapprove of any understanding that binds them as the so-called Paris Accords do, should be secondary. Still, Trump’s resistance to it is understandable. Both political parties should disapprove it, as the U.S. Senate, as required by the Constitution, never ratified it.
But the governors are violating other parts of the Constitution as well. Listed in Article I, Section 10 are powers denied to the states, mostly those given to Congress in Section 8. It begins, “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation….” The listing follows but it means with any other states or nations. Certainly Brown’s the United States Climate Alliance is an alliance with other states to accomplish a combined purpose specifically forbidden by the Constitution.
Brown has a history of forming other alliances with states as well, even countries, in his Under2 Coalition “a group of national and subnational governments dedicated to keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.” Which “now boasts more than 170 jurisdictions worldwide, with Canada, Mexico and Sweden among the newest members” (Tribune News Service June 2, 2017, “As Trump Exists Climate Deal, States Form Alliance to Uphold it”). These countries include signed agreements with China and Germany. Not only does this violate the above-mentioned constitutional citation but yet another which reads “No state shall, without the Consent of Congress … enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power” (Art. 1, Sec. 10, Cla. 3).
It gets worse. Considering himself America’s climate czar, Brown is “urging the world to defy President Trump and join him in San Francisco next year for a ‘climate action summit’. ” President Trump “is trying to get out of the Paris agreement, but he doesn’t speak for the rest of America,” Brown told an audience (Tribune News Service, “Challenging Trump, Jerry Brown Announces Global Climate Summit in California,” July 10, 2017). His defiance is not only unconstitutional but borders on treason. It is a dangerous precedent if the governor’s threat to the nation and Constitution is not challenged.
Brown may argue that he is initiating only economic agreements with foreign countries but the Constitution governs this area as well leaving it to the federal government. “No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports” or “Lay any duty of Tonnage,” and continues with other restrictions on the state (Art 1, Sec.10, Cla.2). Clearly Congress alone has “Power to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations”(Art. 1, Sec. 8, Cla. 3).
Unfortunately, the United States Climate Alliance created by the governors of California, Washington and New York just two months ago, has grown to include 12 states and Puerto Rico. Nowhere in the Constitution is a governor given authority to represent the federal government on foreign policy, defy existing policy or participate in creating new foreign policy. Like it or not Trump does speak for America and constitutionally the federal government is the only authority in foreign policy, including climate policy, or foreign commerce.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Oct 10, 2017 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
President Donald Trump has promised to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure but he wants to leverage this money to provide the extra provided by states and cities to make their project possible, not pay the whole thing. This way he gets the most bang for the federal buck. Whether Trump understands the Constitution or not it leaves infrastructure to the states and cities, he seems to be working toward that end, at least having them pay much more for such, but he is likely to get resistance because they are used to handouts.
Three reasons justify this position. Residents are the primary users of what is built, thus should sustain its cost. Infrastructure, or anything like it, is not listed in Article I, Section 8 as a function of the federal government, nor has it been added by way of amendment to the Constitution, and thus, is entirely a state, county and city function. Finally, the federal government is over $20 trillion in debt, a debt that cannot be paid in a lifetime and even then not without quantitative easement of the currency, the process of inflating existing money.
Of course, the argument that the nation has been funding infrastructure for well over a century beginning with the transcontinental railroads after the Civil War, then the numerous construction projects of the Franklin Roosevelt era, then to the interstate freeways under Dwight D. Eisenhower, is a powerful argument. Still, going off the Constitution just once in 1869 to help the Union and Central Pacific Railroads complete the first transcontinental railroad justified going off it two more times the next twenty years for other transcontinental railroads expecting the same benefits. Every special interest group makes its case based upon what was given others. For this reason it is almost impossible to cease giving once started and get back to the Constitution.
When railroad tycoons realized that they could get the federal government to help pay for such, ensuring greater profits for them, other tycoons sought and expected the same benefits. James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railroad crossed the continent without federal help, because he did not want federal control, proving that, sooner or later, it could be done without federal help and damage to the Constitution.
All of the vast federal infrastructure projects of the 1930’s were also not constitutionally based. The federal government had no authority to finance infrastructure projects or job creation. Many also question whether these were absolutely necessary for economic survival. Others, including myself, believe that they prolonged the Great Depression to 12 years, instead of the usual two to three years, and that it was World War II that ended the Depression, not anything that Franklin Roosevelt did.
Federal job creation, formerly left entirely to the private sector, is now expected by voters as is a forced retirement plan called social security. Two new amendments to the Constitution would have authorized these drastic changes in the distribution of power and in authorizing such, but no amendments were even sought. We have had extensive national debt since.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, presumably troubled by the stark constitutional departures of his two predecessors, based his extensive interstate freeway infrastructure project on national security. Why not make landing strips for military planes everywhere available by merely, when needed, closing down a section of the freeway to public travel? It has never been used for such.
It was a brilliant stretch of the Constitution but national defense is at least a federal government responsibility as it is empowered “to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” Still, given the cost and that its primary function was to promote interstate travel thus, in practice had very little to do with national security, constitutionalists would have had us seek other ways of accomplishing the landing of jets, as for example, at military air bases and, in a real emergency, commercial airports.
Some have defended these huge constitutional departures by referring to interstate commerce. The Constitution reads, “The Congress shall have Power … To regulate Commerce … among the several States.” Under the original interpretation, commerce among the states did not begin until goods commenced their final movement from their state of origin to that of their destination. It was to ensure that states did not impede commerce, the movement of things, by regulation. This had been a problem necessitating the Constitutional Convention. Who had authority at the border, more especially when the border was a river moving commerce, as the Potomac between Maryland and Virginia? But there was never authority given to create the river or the road? Like postal delivery, another itemized federal power, commerce would use existing roads.
Now the states are addicted to federal handouts. Rather than raise state taxes to fund even big projects, often referred to as TIGER grants, to which they have become accustomed, they do not mind federal slavery as long as the feds do not dry up their federal teat. Fifty years ago they would have resisted losing their independence from the federal government. Now dependent they are likely to resist Trump’s measure to be otherwise. Trump wants to stretch federal dollars to provide the extra percent to put the project over the top.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Oct 2, 2017 | Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
In 20 minutes of casual news scanning on just one network, I found five news items dealing with race baiters (those who see racism in everything). They appear to want to rewrite U.S. history emphasizing white oppression. Here is what I learned.
At the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill students, notably UNC’s Black Law Students Association, are preparing to sue the university for violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act (specifically Titles IV and VI) for refusing to tear down a statue of a Confederate soldier known as Silent Sam. They claim that he “violates anti-discrimination laws by fostering a racially hostile learning environment.” Actually Sam is a 1913 memorial to Confederate UNC alumni and an important part of the institutions history.
Another news story spoke of a Texas school district considering renaming schools named after Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison as these names have become offensive to some. Race baiters have in their sites 17 historical figures notably Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson posing the question, “Aren’t they really racist given their connection to slavery?” The Dallas Independent School District Board has already “recommended name changes for four schools named after Confederate figures, including Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.”
Even Christian Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee seems under the spell with the president apologizing to black students for having cotton, yes cotton, used in a table decoration at a dinner for black students in his home. Ironically the dinner was to discuss African-American experiences at Lipscomb aimed at making the group more comfortable, but race baiters see racism in everything—even cotton. The president, with his tail tucked between his legs (no offense to dogs) responded, “The content of the centerpieces was offensive, and I could have handled the situation with more sensitivity. I sincerely apologize for the discomfort anger or disappointment, we caused and solicit your forgiveness.”
On the other side of the nation Evergreen State College in Washington State just announced the end of litigation against them for having had a “Day of Absence,” requiring all whites to leave the campus for one day so that “non-white students could have a safe space to talk about oppression”—presumably white oppression. Bret Weinstein and his wife, both white and biology instructors at Evergreen, refused the directive to leave, even holding classes, which subjected them to both ridicule and safety concerns. They sued and won on the basis that the school tolerated—even endorsed—“egregious violations (and even crimes) purportedly to advance racial social goals, diminishing the collegiate experience for all, and fostering racially hostile work and retaliatory environment for faculty and staff.” Thus, “the college has refused to protect its employees from repeated provocative and corrosive verbal and written hostility based on race, as well as threats of physical violence.” The couple was awarded $500,000 but was required to resign from Evergreen State College.
The fifth news story however, in the 20 minute scan of one network, featured a black Trump supporter, Diante Johnson, founder of the Black Conservative Federation, interviewed by CNN, making the case that “there shouldn’t be ‘white guilt’ in today’s America” for how their ancestors may have treated the blacks generations ago.
CNN did not follow up with just why, but Johnson has it right. No white person now living had anything to do with slavery 150 years ago. Even then, it was almost entirely the whites of the north that gave their lives to free the slaves. It was whites that established and maintained the Underground Railroad at considerable risk to themselves and it was white author Harriet Beecher Stow in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, who brought attention to the moral issue of slavery. Even today, race baiters need to be reminded that it was whites that elected the first half-black president, Barack Obama.
Of course, there were abuses of the past. Indians, Chinese, Germans, Japanese, Quakers, Jews and Mormons can all make cases. Race baiters want whites to acknowledge that they are racist and oppressive by nature and should have what they call “white guilt.” The only remedy they seem to accept is compensation, but this is never enough.
But their focus is almost entirely on the blacks and slavery and the then perpetrators and victims are dead and today’s descendants, several generations later, were not wronged. How do they make the case for their receiving compensation for wrongs committed to their ancestors without committing an injustice to those now living—even if it were their ancestors who committed the injustices mentioned? Would they not be the source of new injustice? Why should I pay for the injustices of my ancestors, even worse, when they may not have been the perpetrators? And why should my black neighbor receive a benefit forced from me without creating an injustice to me? Under this logic his posterity will need to atone to my posterity? Could not the same arguments be used against them in a later century?
Today most white Americans are of many races and not racist. Insisting that all whites should have “white guilt “ because of presumed ancestral injustices or confederate association only exacerbates racism, the very thing race baiters insist they wish to end. Then, are not race baiters the “real” racists? That the news gives their racism so much attention should be objectionable to everyone.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
