The Freedom Bulletin

I was reading a post at the CNN Political Ticker about an NAACP resolution to condemn the “racism” of the Tea Party movement. The post quoted Mark Williams, a spokesman for the Tea Party Express, who made a really good point:

“It’s the Obama administration that rolled back civil rights to a pre-civil rights era with ‘Obamacare’ in which they removed the concept of individual rights…it’s the Obama administration that put a tax on white people with a tanning salon tax.”

I never thought of that before, but it makes sense.

Suppose that there was a product that was used almost exclusively by black or Hispanic people. Then suppose that the government decided to tax it. Wouldn’t the NAACP and lots of other people and organizations call this racist?

Tanning salons are used predominantly by white people, and the Democrats’ version of health reform puts a tax on them. Why is no one calling this racist?

Is it just me, or is there a double standard here?

Chris Matthews was on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Thursday, and one of the topics of discussion was Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican who just won the primary in the Kentucky Senate race. Matthews made the following comment about Paul:

“He’s a philosopher, and philosophers shouldn’t run for office. He’s an absolute purist.”

The comment was a reference to Rand’s opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a federal law that prohibits private businesses from racial discrimination. Rand believes that private companies should be able to decide for themselves who to do business with, and the national government should not have the power to force them to accept customers if they don’t want to.

Although I don’t completely agree with him on this issue, I admire Rand’s opinions and his philosophy. Why does Matthews say that philosophers shouldn’t run for office? By “philosopher” and “absolute purist,” Matthews seems to mean someone who has a consistent set of beliefs, based on reason instead of conformity to popular opinion. At least that’s what Matthews is criticizing Rand Paul for. I don’t see why you wouldn’t want someone like that to run for office. Would you rather have a politician who stands for nothing and cares about nothing but getting elected? In my opinion, only philosophers and purists should run for office.

Rand Paul does not have any campaign experience, so he is still learning how to balance being true to his own beliefs with trying to get elected. It’s not surprising that he is already getting criticized in the press, since he actually stands up for liberty, and there are bound to be many people who oppose that.

I like to think that I have a consistent set of beliefs that I stick to. My philosophy is different in some respects from Rand Paul’s philosophy of libertarianism (or paleoconservatism, depending on who you ask) but there are also lots of similarities. In general, I admire people who have unpopular views and stand up for what they believe in, and Rand Paul, unlike the majority of politicians, is such a person. He is criticized for being radical, on the fringe, outside the mainstream, et cetera. But in a society where the mainstream consists of nearly unanimous support for income taxes, the Durham-Humphrey Amendment, and degrading airport security measures, I fail to see how being outside the mainstream is a bad thing. I hope that Rand sticks to what he believes in and resists the pressure to move toward the center. It reflects badly on our society that believing in liberty makes someone part of the “fringe.” A Senator with a consistent, pro-liberty world view and the courage to act on it would be one of the best things to happen to America in many years.

In an article at the Huffington Post, Bob Cesca argues that the only thing the tea party movement stands for is racism. His patently false conclusion is supported by a collection of inaccurate premises combined in illogical ways to create what just might be the most offensive, stupid, and just plain wrong opinion piece I have ever read in my life.

Cesca writes, “When you strip away all of the rage, all of the nonsensical loud noises and all of the contradictions, all that’s left is race. The tea party is almost entirely about race, and there’s no comparative group on the left that’s similarly motivated by bigotry, ignorance and racial hatred.”

It seems that Cesca’s argument goes like this: the tea party doesn’t stand for any consistent ideals, and a few people associated with the tea party have said racist things, so therefore all the tea party stands for is racism. Also, there are no left-wing organizations that are racist like the tea party; therefore the tea party is more outrageous than any left-wing organization.

I will go over this argument premise by premise and show why it fails:

1. The tea party has no consistent ideals, goals, or platform. This premise is false. Not only is it false but anyone who thinks it is true has no concept of, and places no value on, freedom. Although the tea party movement encompasses people with a wide array of views, its main platform is liberty. This means a smaller government that spends less, taxes less, and restricts people’s choices less. It is troubling that someone would be unable to understand this concept. Cesca calls the entire tea party movement contradictory because one particular tea partier opposes both the bank bailout and fees on banks to recover the money, and because the tea party movement did not exist during the Bush presidency. But one might believe it is better for the government tojust  interfere in the economy once by giving banks free money than to interfere even more in an attempt to get the money back. As for Bush, there are a million non-racist reasons for people to become more outraged during Obama’s presidency. Many tea partiers opposed Bush’s violations of liberty too, some people’s philosophies may simply have evolved, some people might feel more passionate about economic issues than security, or perhaps the state of freedom in our country is worse than ever before. Under Obama, none of Bush’s oppressive laws have gone away, and many things, such as airport security and government interference in the economy and potentially health insurance, have gotten worse! Opinions within the tea party movement are diverse, but they are not contradictory. I can’t think of a more simple, meaningful, or important cause than liberty.
2. A few people associated with the tea party have said racist things. I’m willing to grant this. Cesca does give a few examples in his article, some of which are dubious (Karl Rove?) but some of which I have no reason to doubt the factual accuracy.
3. Therefore, the tea party is a racist organization. Even if the first two premises were true, which only one is, this would not follow. The fact that a few members of a group have a certain view does not mean that the group as a whole has that view. For example, some Democrats (and some Republicans) are atheists. Would Cesca say that the Democratic Party stands for atheism? Didn’t think so.
4. There are no left-wing groups as racist as the tea party. Since I just established that the tea party is actually not racist, it seems that there are plenty of left-wing organizations that are also not racist. So this premise is false.
5. Therefore, there are no left-wing groups as outrageous as the tea party. This obviously isn’t true. In addition to the near certainty of there being a left-wing group that is more racist than the tea party (because the tea party isn’t racist at all), there are definitely left-wing groups with more outrageous platforms than the tea party’s. For example, the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts supports both “elimination of the private possession of handguns” and “protection of basic constitutional rights.” Now that’s contradictory!

Besides this dubious argument, Cesca also makes the laughable claim that “it’s impossible for the majority race…to be on the receiving end of racism.” Really? In South Africa in the days of apartheid, blacks were the majority but they were still oppressed by whites. Additionally, in America today, affirmative action penalizes people in college admissions for being white. Is that not racist?

Another fact that I should mention: at the two Boston Tea Parties that I participated in, people of all races were in attendance. I specifically remember some really nice black teenagers/college students selling anti-Obama t-shirts. So much for the tea partiers being a bunch of white supremacists.

Articles like Cesca’s are the reason why liberals have a reputation for being pompous snobs. If you disagree with someone, you should criticize their arguments. Instead, Cesca insults his opponents’ intelligence (“I’m not even entirely sure they realize that the bailouts and the recovery act (stimulus) are two different things”), assigns us a motive that we do not have (racism), and uses epithets (“teabaggers”). It is ironic that Cesca accuses us tea partiers of being motivated by ignorance and hatred, when he is so blinded by his disdain for us that he refuses to make a serious attempt to understand our ideology. Now that is ignorance.

President Obama recently did several interviews, where he said that race is not the main reason why people dislike him and his policies. I agree with Obama on this. I really disagreed with Jimmy Carter’s comments that Rep. Joe Wilson’s “you lie” comment was “based on racism.” How do you figure that? Wilson was expressing his opinion that Obama was lying when he said that his health reform plan would not extend coverage to illegal immigrants, an opinion that is pretty reasonable. (See this blog post from the Humble Libertarian for a great argument that Obama was, indeed, lying).

If Wilson only yelled at Obama because he is black, how do you explain the behavior of the Democrats in Congress who booed President Bush at his 2005 State of the Union Address, as seen in this YouTube video? If one party heckles the president during a speech when they disagree with his opinion, the other party should be able to, too! To my knowledge, the Democrats who booed Bush did not apologize, nor were they officially censured. Yet Wilson quickly apologized and even then was censured by the House of Representatives.

I believe that the House resolution officially condemning Wilson was unnecessary, excessive, and mean-spirited. I also think it’s stupid to call Wilson’s comment racist. Wilson called Obama a liar because he disagreed with what he was saying, and I bet he would have done the same if the president happened to be white. Disagreeing with Obama is not racist (unless you disagree with him because of his race), and by claiming that it is, Carter seems to expect people never to criticize Obama. But people have been criticizing their leaders for all of history, as they should. Equality means that all races are treated the same. A world where people criticize white presidens but not black ones would certainly not be a world of equality, and to expect people to behave that way is racist.

Various people have been making a ruckus over the New York Post’s cartoon that allegedly compares Barack Obama to a chimpanzee. The cartoon shows police officers killing a chimpanzee and saying “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” Numerous people have been calling the cartoon racist, and now Al Sharpton is trying to organize a boycott of the paper.

I disagree with the claim that this cartoon is racist. First of all, the chimpanzee could just as easily be representing Congress as Obama, since Congress actually created and passed the stimulus bill. Additionally, even if the chimpanzee represents Obama, that does not make the cartoon racist. Maybe the cartoon is meant to call Obama stupid, or compare his out-of-control spending to the Travis the chimpanzee’s rampage (a pretty good comparison, by the way). Under none of these interpretations is the cartoon criticizing Obama for his race, so I don’t see how the cartoon could be interpreted as racist.

People in America are becoming oversensitive about racial issues. Just because Obama is black doesn’t mean that anyone who doesn’t like him is racist. Believe it or not, there are many things that a non-racist person could find to criticize about Obama, such as his support of a more progressive tax system and excessive government spending. Al Sharpton actually said that the Post “thought we (African-Americans) were chimpanzees.” Since when does criticizing the stimulus package amount to calling all black people chimpanzees?

The only thing about the cartoon that I find offensive is that it is making fun of a tragedy that resulted in a woman being mauled by a chimpanzee and the chimpanzee being killed. I love animals, and I find it icky that the paper is making fun of a chimpanzee dying. For the most part, however, the cartoon is just criticizing the stimulus bill, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

The Supreme Court has struck down plans to use race as a factor in assigning students to public schools. It was a 5 to 4 decision, and Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. I agree with the Court’s decision. Forced integration is wrong, and so is anti-white dicscrimination, which is becoming all too common in today’s society. If anything, I think the Court should have made a less wishy-washy ruling – schools are still allowed to consider race to a limited extent in certain situations.

For the full story, see CNN.