Thursday, April 22, 2010

What Does It Mean to Be a Racist?

What does it mean to be a racist?

Historically, this means that one actively discriminates against a person because of his or her race.

But what does it mean to discriminate? Does it entail the requirement to forfeit one's property, speech, and other individual rights on demand of any allegedly offended race?

The Democrats would have you believe yes.

Racism is the left's bully tactic to get Americans to accept socialism out of the white man's original sin of having owned slaves in this country - 150 years ago. White men whom neither you or I know. But because I share the same general level of skin pigmentation as some white people in the past, apparently I am culpable for all our "race's" misdeeds.

One might ask a leftist: Is this is not a form of racism, in and of itself? Be prepared to elicit blank stares.

Yet if it is the case that all dead white men's sins are to be laid at my feet, can I take credit for all of dead white men's positive deeds? By the left's flawed logic, couldn't I argue that I deserve credit for discovering that lightning is electricity, for inventing flight, and for developing the polio vaccine?

But such is the twisted and seemingly incomprehensible nature of the race narrative. If you aren't for socialism on behalf of blacks, then you are no different than a slave-master or a Klansman. If you are opposed to illegal immigrants raiding the welfare state on your dime, then you are a backwards ultra-nationalist xenophobe whose primary concern should be to keep one's knuckles from scraping the ground.

In other words, if you are against policies that damage the economy by punishing productivity and prosperity, oppose providing incentives for government dependence, and reject behavior that causes social dysfunction, then you, my friend, are a reactionary, and a racist one at that.

At the heart of the progressive narrative is a simple and perverse truism: That the non-action of withholding one's life and labor from the state or the mob is inherently "evil" by association with the instant epithet "selfish." If one withholds one's property or labor from those of a different race, then that person naturally must be a racist.

If you are white and believe in the Constitution, limited government, and the market system, then by the left's twisted reasoning, you are a racist. It doesn't matter how many black friends you have, how many intellectuals and politicians who happen to be so-called "minorities" you admire, or how you ignore race in everything from Hollywood movies to professional sports.

If you aren't down with socialism, you might as well be burning crosses.

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