The current firestorm over the shooting of a black teenager in Florida is disturbing enough in itself, but pales in comparison to the reality of why such a firestorm is taking place. I contend that it is due, in large part, to the fact that the Democrat Party has kept blacks in a defacto state of slavery since roughly the 1820’s. If you’re already blowing a gasket over that contention, I recommend to hit next and move on. If I have picqued your interest, read on.
In 1820, a law was enacted that we refer to as the Missouri Compromise. In it, the state of Maine was admitted to the Union as a free (from slavery) state, while Missouri entered as a slave state. In addition, future states above the 36 degree 30 minute line would be free, and those below slave. As Jefferson predicted, this law would lay the foundation for the Civil War. Most of the people who supported this law were Democrats and southern plantation aristocracy.
In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which enabled the people living in those states, and any future states admitted to the Union, to have an up-or-down vote on whether or not they would be slave or free, and in essence repealed the Missouri Compromise. This was a very hotly debated issue, and resulted in one of the most famous set of debates in our history – the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Senator Stephen Douglas was a Democrat, and supported the Act. Abraham Lincoln, a member of the newly formed Republican Party (founded in Ripon, WI in 1854), opposed it. The most famous of the debates took place in Freeport, Illinois, and by all accounts, the crowds at all of them were large and hostile toward Lincoln’s point of view.
The resulting chaos that ensued in Kansas and Nebraska resulted in open guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery supporters and anti-slavery opponents of the law. This is where the Civil War started, if unofficially.
In 1857, more fuel was added to the fire by the Dred Scott Decision of the Supreme Court. What it boiled down to was that when a slave owner took his slave, Dred Scott, on a trip to a non-slave state, the slave ran away. When he was captured, he contested the right of the slave owner to keep him as a slave since they were in a free state. The court decided in favor of the slave owner, saying that Scott was his property by law in his home state and remained so even if traveling in a non-slave state. While southern slave owners (most Democrats) applauded the decision, northern abolitionists were enraged.
It has often been stated that southern secession at the start of the Civil War was more about the issue of state’s rights than about slavery as a primary cause. In truth, the slavery was the main issue, and the state’s rights argument was in reference to the right of the state to maintain slavery by law. State’s rights was often used as a pretext by those who personally were opposed to slavery as an institution but who supported the state in imposing slavery. Again, nearly all of those who supported and approved of secession were Democrats, even those who did not own slaves.`
Lincoln is often credited for freeing the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation, but in fact, that applied only to slaves freed by the military in those states that were part of the Confederacy. It was more intended to impact the ability of the south to maintain its ability to feed itself, and maintain its war effort than to actually provide freedom for blacks. Lincoln was not in favor of slavery, but he did not consider blacks to be his equal except for the idea that every man had the natural right to the fruits of his own labor, and that no man should be enslaved for the mere consequence of skin color. This was a point he made to great effect in the Freeport debate in 1854 against Stephen Douglas. Even today, Democrats often try to say that Lincoln was a racist, when if fact he was anything but.
After the Civil War, sympathetic southerners did everything in their power to render the emancipation of blacks via the Emancipation Proclamation and subsequently the 14th Amendment a moot point. They came up with hundreds of rules and regulations that imposed poll taxes and other outrages on blacks to keep them uneducated, and in their place. When blacks fought back, the KKK stepped in and lynched many of them to serve as examples for those who contemplated “getting out of line.” The aristocratic good ‘ole boy network of southern Democrats kept blacks down this way for nearly 100 years by the use of these Jim Crow laws.
The segregated south was a political and social reality for the first half of the 20th century. Progressives in the first half of the century are largely responsible for the separate but equal philosophy of segregation. In theory, separate but equal sounds good, but in reality it was anything but equal. Finally, with the help of black ministers like Martin Luther King, and white Republicans, the Civil Rights Act was passed. While this went a long way toward redressing and eliminating Jim Crow, the Democrats largely co-opted credit for the act, and ultimately imposed many of the same style of Jim Crow restrictions under the guise of civil rights activism. It took the Voting Rights Act to eliminate most of those laws.
However, one area that was heavily espoused by Democrats and ultimate ended up re-enslaving blacks from an economic standpoint, was Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal social welfare programs. By the time of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the 1960’s, Lyndon Johnson upped the ante with a huge increase in welfare programs for minorities, and something new — Affirmative Action. In essence, this became the padlock on the plantation slave quarters. Blacks, already deeply in a rut because of New Deal social welfare programs, now had to stay with the program pushed by the Democrats in order to benefit from Affirmative Action. Now, they had access to all kinds of things simply because they were black, often at the expense of those already in a job, or college, etc. And, to enable blacks to compete more effectively, many times requirement standards were lowered to the point that nearly anyone could get the job, even if they were unable to actually do it. The era of Affirmative Action is replete with examples of uneducated, and unqualified people being hired for a job simply because they were black or some other minority, or a woman. This sort of thing went on for several decades, though it is slowly being done away with today.
The latest outrage that the Democrats are perpetrating on blacks is in the form of opposition to presenting an ID to vote. When blacks have finally gotten to the point where nobody questions their right to vote, Democrats are in effect pushing the idea that requiring someone to prove they are who they say they are in order to vote is disenfranchising those very voters. Voting is not only a sacred duty and a right, but it carries with it the implicit requirement that we ensure that nobody can steal another man’s vote by saying he is someone he isn’t. This also involves the perpetration of voter fraud by claiming the identity of someone who is dead in order to vote. A voter picture ID virtually eliminates the dead voting, and ensures that when John Q. Public steps up to the election judge to obtain a ballot that nobody else can claim to be him and vote in his place. A voter ID is a mechanism to safeguard that sacred right to vote that every American has, and which is Constitutionally guaranteed. Yet, once again, Democrats are having screaming fits whenever the subject comes up, and the current administrations Department of Justice has taken the extraordinary step of declaring the use of voter ID in many states to be illegal because of minority intimidation or difficulty in obtaining such an ID.
That argument is ludicrous on its face, since blacks and anyone else who partakes of the benefits provided by government, are already required to have a picture ID to obtain welfare, to obtain a driver’s license, and on. They somehow manage to do that, so why is it such an extreme burden to get a voter ID? In states that have an ID requirement, most of them will accept almost any picture ID as long as it shows the current address as well.
But, as the history of blacks in this country in their dealings with Democrats shows, the rhetoric very often bears little resemblance to reality. Blacks are just as much slaves today to the system via welfare and progressive Democrat thought as they ever were to the plantation slave owners of 150 years ago. Sadly, the situation in Florida may end up sparking a race war that will put them even farther away from achieving true equality.