Open Letter to Joe Scarborough. By Eric Smith

An Open Letter to Joe Scarborough
Morning Joe
MSNBC

Dear Mr. Scarborough:

My name is Eric Smith; a proud member of a group, #Uniteblue you have just nationally demeaned as being comprised of extremists and hatemongers. Now I should be surprised by your comments directed at us but I am not because by you being a proud member of the Republican Party who knows more about extremists and hatemongers than you do. After all hate is your base as the picture included in this picture clearly illustrated.

You and your fellow Republicans defend individuals like this who wave the Confederate flag in front of a White House that houses the first African President of the United States as being a simple expression of free speech yet you smear my group #Uniteblue as being composed of hatemongers & extremists even though our sole reason is to support President Obama & his agenda and by that I mean support equal pay for equal work for women, an end to voter supression based on as now being solely practiced by your Republican Party, a raising of the minimum wage so hard working Americans should not have to continue to suffer the trauma & indignity of remaining in poverty even though they work several jobs and play by the rules.

We in #Uniteblue support extending unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed so they can continue to support themselves and their families while they continue to seek regain the ranks of the gainfully employed; ranks (jobs) they lost due to your beloved GOP's destructive economic policies that sent this country into a Great Recession and would have led to a second Great Depression but for this current president and the sane economic policies of sharing the wealth as the responsibilities that both he and #Uniteblue so heartily support.

We support the Affordable Health Care Act because we believe that affordable health care is a matter of life and death for millions. We in #Uniteblue support common sense gun laws for the same reason which is funny when you think about it because you belong to the so called Right to Life Party but support policies that end lives whereas the policies we in #Uniteblue support in the form of affordable health care and common sense gun laws both sustain and save lives.

Yet according to you and your ilk it is we who are the extremists and the hatemongers. Again it is funny considering how your party has had no problem giving voice to the crazies who say that President Obama was not born in the United States and is thus not eligible to be president. It is your party which has not called out those haters who have substituted the word ROPE for HOPE in images of President Obama with a noose around his neck while an effigy of the President of the United States is hanging from a tree.

I find it very amusing that you recently celebrated the life & legacy if Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks, while commorating the 100th Anniversary of the opening of Chicago's venerable Wrigley Field. I find it interesting because if your party, your Republican Party, has its way, then people who look like Mr. Cub will lose their right to vote. People who look like Mr. Cub will again have to drink at separatee water fountains and use separate restrooms. Why, because that is what your party's base believes in; that's what they are about and you being a Republican these days can no more separate yourself from that than one can separate the stink from manure.

So if you want to call we in #Uniteblue extremists then go right ahead because to people like you and your party who clearly believe in the exact opposite of what we do, then we in #Uniteblue are extremists; we are extremists in the sense that we not only believe in but believe in fighting tooth and nail for equal pay for equal equal work, for an end to voter suppression based on race, for women's reproductive rights, and a raising of the minimum wage. We are extremists in the sense that we fight for what we believe in and we are hatemongers in the sense that we call out the hatred; be that hatred grounded on racism, sexism, or homophobia, of those who oppose us.

Yet more to the point, when we speak we speak from the heart and we speak for free. We have created our own bully pulpit and by calling us out you have given us a national forum. Unlike you Mr. Scarborough our voices will not be muted once we stop making money for those who provide us a forum for your forum is limited to a network; our forum is America and our audience is the American people and the American people; being ultimately about full equality & fair play will continue to listen to and learn from us in #Uniteblue long after they have tuned you and your beloved party out.

We in #Uniteblue stand on the right side of history and we stand on the right side of history because we stand united with the people. We in #Uniteblue stand for freedom for all rather than freedom for the few for we know that whenever freedom is limited to the few there is no real freedom for anybody. So in the final analysis Mr. Scarborough if we in #Uniteblue are extremists then so too is justice, full equality, and fair play. If we are as you say hatemongers, then so too is love; love for our fellow citizens who are less fortunate and those noble ideals of Equal Opportunity and Equal Justice for All that makes America so great.

Unlike you and your fellow Republcians Mr. Scarborough who repeatedly pay mere lip service to your love of Liberty and who have long since mastered the art of preaching what you don't practice in regards to it; we in #Uniteblue do practice what we preach when it comes to Liberty for again we believe in and fight for freedom for all; we fight to secure it for those for whom it is still too often wrongly denied; people of color, women, gays, the middle class, and the poor. That's who we are and nothing said will ever take away our pride or prevent us from proudly proclaiming who we are and what we stand for; for who we are and what we stand for is something good, it is something decent, and it is something great for who we stand for and who we stand with is each other; other of course being America and from where I sit Sir that is neither the mark of an extemist or a hatemonger. It is the proud emblem of a patriot.

Sincerely,

Eric Smith

Proud member of #Uniteblue

Why I Support #UniteBlue. By Eric Smith

I am a proud member of a group called #UniteBlue and I say proud because these are some of the most upstanding decent people I have ever had the privilege of knowing on Facebook or off. They all stand for and fight for all the right things as far as I'm concerned; equal pay for equal work, a raising of the minimum wage, extension of unemployment benefits, an end to voter suppression, and support for women's reproductive rights among other things.

These people are anything but radicals and are operating nowhere near a fringe unless the fringe can be defined as a place where people believe in justice and fight for fair play. Now even though I have a Twitter account, Twitter is not really my thing and I use it very, very sparingly.

However today or yesterday some Twitter Twit who works as a talking head at a very prominent network tweeted some very vile and nasty things about #UniteBlue. Of course, because this person does occupy a somewhat prominent position in the mass media, people in my group are understandably very upset and taking what this Twitter Twit said very seriously and quite personally. Even though I love #UniteBlue and am a proud member of it I am not the least bit offended by what this person said and I certainly don't take anything he has to say about anything seriously or personally. I mean I don't watch him on TV and I certainly don't follow him on Twitter because he doesn't strike me as being all that relevant. Now I'm not going to say this person's mental elevator is a full express but it sure as hell isn't a local either because anyone who would say about #UniteBlue clearly has an elevator that skips some floors.

As such I'm not going to mention this fellow's name because he's not worth the time and I'm certainly not going to embarrass the network he works for by mentioning his name in the same sentence as that network because overall this network does a fantastic job and is entitled to have a "mistake" in its employ if it chooses as this not to be named individual most certainly is.

So to my fellow members of #UniteBlue don't dignify this stupidity by reacting to it or demanding an apology that cannot possibly be anything other than insincere. Our job; our only job, is to get people to the polls this election year and beyond; to render the Republican Party and the Far Right extinct. That's our job; to make the GOP the political equivalent of the Passenger Pigeon. That's it. All of this other stuff is just a needless distraction and is neither worthy of our attention or our time. We answer what was said about us today by getting people registered to vote and to the polls. Period. So move on my friends at #UniteBlue and just say to yourselves "Mistake who?" and leave it at that.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Voter-Registration-2014/563067973807503?ref=hl

Rhetoric versus Reality. By Eric Smith

With me, whenever rhetoric clashes with reality, reality always wins. Therefore when those in the Republican Party say that it is not racist, that it does not coddle racists, that it is not fueled by the mantra of white supremacy and white privilege, what I have before me is this rhetoric on the one hand and reality on another.

That reality is among many other things the reality of voter suppression, the scapegoating of young African American males as being criminals & inherently dangerous, the promotion of this falsehood that poverty is a matter of choice and is confined to our inner cities dominated by people of color; that rampant drug use, sexual promiscuity, is a black thing.

All of this reality; all of this racial stereotyping; this pandering to this latent fear that white people in this country have had from before the beginning of this Republic, is part & parcel of the Republican Party & the Far Right's agenda. It motivates its base to act on the most primal & primitive of human instincts; fear and jealousy; creating a false narrative of grievance and of being wronged.

A clear acknowledgement of this reality is seen in the Republican Party's never ending efforts to trot out people of color as its spokespersons because the reasoning of the GOP & the Far Right is simple; if they can can get people of color to support policies that are indeed racist, and grounded in white supremacy then of course they can in turn argue that their policies & practices are not racist; are not grounded in white supremacy because a person of color is defending it.

Yet the fact that the Republican Party feels compelled to recruit people of color to defend its policies is proof positive that it is indeed the Party of Racism & White Supremacy because no white person needs a black person to say that they are not racist if racist they are not. The fact that these people in the GOP & the Far Right feel compelled to use people of color to defend their policies is proof positive that they are racist & believe in white supremacy.

They have not recruited the likes of Dr. Ben Carson, Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, and Herman Cain to speak for them because of the content of their character. They have recruited them to speak for them because of the color of their skin; because they believe that the color of their skin will shield them from the charges of racism that is the reality of voter suppression, the scapegoating of young African American males as being criminals & inherently dangerous, the promotion of this falsehood that poverty is a matter of choice and is confined to our inner cities & dominated by people of color; that rampant drug use, sexual promiscuity, is a black thing.

To them these black people they have speaking for them are the political equivalent of a legitimate business set up as a front by criminal enterprises in order to shield their illegal activities. They are an attempt to hide the truth; to conceal from the public at large their racism & belief in white supremacy that is at the heart of the GOP & the Far Right's agenda.

Of course they will continue to deny this. They will continue to accuse me and anyone else who points this out of race baiting & playing the race card. Yet understand this and understand it well; whenever Republicans accuse people like me & others of race baiting and playing the race card, all it is is rhetoric and empty rhetoric at that for for the reality is that these people do promote racism; that they are believers in white supremacy. Their rhetoric of denial is what they preach. The racist reality of the people & policies they support is what they practice. What are YOU going to believe? Their rhetoric or their reality?

Understanding One's Limits. By Eric Smith

Too many people have an exaggerated sense of the power of personal persuasion; particularly their own. There is this mistaken belief on the part of too many that every problem can be talked to a solution, and that every crisis can be rationally reasoned away. There is this sense that if we say something long enough and loud enough, that eventually everyone will come to see things our way and deal with them as we would deal with them and this is true of everything from the treatment of mental illness to questions of war & peace themselves.

Yet such is not the case. It has not and never will be for while times change and technology & knowledge advances, human nature at heart remains the same and by that I mean every human being has the capacity for both great love and depraved cruelty. Every human being has within them the capacity to be violent or nonviolent, and every human being has a physical & psychological breaking point; a point past which all rational thought & logic disappears and where our most primal and basic instincts takes full and complete control of our thoughts, words, and deeds.

This is true of everybody and as such it is invariably those who are most cognizant of their potential to lose control who are most capable of always maintaining it for they more than anyone else are most alert to those warning signs that personal control is in imminent danger of being lost. We must, as Senator Robert F. Kennedy said on the afternoon of April 5, 1968 learn to "abandon the vanity of our false distinctions." We must dis-enthrall ourselves of the false belief that the power of reasoned, logical thought is absolute and again come to terms with the reality that however advanced we humans may be in regards to all other living things, that we are at heart imperfect beings; forever struggling to survive and make some sense of an often irrational, violent, and depraved world.

Our time among the living is invariably short. We are all condemned to be consigned to memory far sooner than we think and in most cases even desire. So as each passing second brings us ever closer to that moment of our final departure it would seem to me that our dwindling time alive would be far better spent spending more of our remaining hours spending less time trying to make sense of the world and more time trying to make more sense of our own individual lives.

It is great and noble to try to improve the lives of others but it makes no sense to ignore ourselves in the process; to condemn ourselves to the twilight of perpetual anger and personal distress as we fret over the problems facing the world; most of which we have zero power to control or solve to our liking. Do what you feel you must do to help improve the lives of others in any way possible but remember always that it is not an exercise in selfishness to seek whatever joy & personal satisfaction for your own lives that you can; it is merely exercising basic common sense for what is the point of even being alive if one cannot find some pleasure in the very act of living?

In the final analysis we are all born alone and we will all die alone. No one else has ever experienced birth as we ourselves have experienced it and no one else ever has and ever will, experience dying as we are all destined to experience death. We are all ultimately defined not by our limitations but by what degree we have transcended them according to our natural abilities, motivations, and desires, and life ultimately being about the art of the personal, in the end it will be ourselves and ourselves alone who will make the final determination as to whether or not the life we have lived has been a success or a failure.

The Sin of Starvation. By Eric Smith

When people, for whatever rhyme or reason, are unable to acquire food to eat; when they become hungry & malnourished, their immune systems weaken, thus making them weaker and more susceptible to disease and as a result of this they inevitably become sick and they die; if not from starvation itself, then from the inevitable illnesses arising out of being malnourished. These are the facts; they are beyond dispute and not open for debate and therefore to willfully deprive people of their ability to eat as the Republican Party is doing now with its slashing of food assistance to the poor and the most needy; is not only committing a moral crime in the fact that the Republicans are actually killing people; they are also violating both our nation's Declaration of Independence and its Constitution which states that we are all "endowed with certain unalienable rights; among which are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

When one is denied the ability to eat they are denied all three for there can be no "life, Liberty, and pursuit of happiness" when one is forced to go through life hungry. This country throws away more food in a day than many nations in the world produces to feed their citizens over the course of a year. To deny the hungry food to eat is no different than denying a person in an emergency room life saving care because of an inability to pay. If we ever started doing this; if children died because they were turned away from a hospital's ER because their parents or guardians couldn't pay the hospital bill on the spot, these same Republicans who are so gleefully denying food assistance to the most needy among us, would be among those who raised the loudest of protests over the cruelty of such a practice.

Yet what they are doing now in cutting food assistance to the most needy among us is no different and is in many ways it is far worse for to perish from hunger is to die a most slow and painful death; especially if one is a child. Now if America did not and/or was incapable of producing enough food to ensure several times over that every last one of its 300 million plus citizens could be properly nourished, then the policies they pursue in cutting food assistance while no less cruel, could conceivably be slightly justified as a cost saving measure.

Yet that is not the case. On farms all across the land unused grain is rotting, unsold livestock is being being butchered & sold to feed other livestock and hungry people in other nations. Restaurants make the rats & other vermin fat off the food they daily discard while in many of those very same back alleys where the rodents feast, men, women, and children, sleep and go hungry for lack of a roof over their heads and their inability to buy that very food which the nearby vermin feast on for free.

This is the Republican Reality; this is the Republican Party's version of an ideal America, and it is a sick, twisted version indeed; one that is totally undeserving of a nation of savages, let alone that of the greatest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world. A child can't learn if its hungry and a man and woman can't work to their full potential if they are malnourished; that is true of any living thing.

It is therefore in our vested national interests to ensure that every last one of our citizens is afforded the chance to eat; to take in proper nourishment regardless of economic status or race. This is what we must do or we must stop pretending being what we are not; a nation that cares, that believes in the sanctity of human life, for our acts of charity abroad mean absolutely nothing if we do not first act charitably on behalf of those who are most needy here at home. Feed Americans first Republicans for your fellow Americans are your first priority as they are the priority of us all.

Think less of Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Timbuktu for a minute and more of your fellow Americans in need. Share some of your compassion with the poor, oppressed, and downtrodden in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Detroit to name but a few. Stop doing the right things for people abroad for all the wrong reasons and start doing the right thing for the right reasons for your fellow citizens here at home. A nation that is well nourished and well fed is a nation that is truly strong and so when people support policies that starve their fellow citizens; especially for partisan purposes; they are not being patriotic; they are acting as terrorists for deliberately starving someone is an act of terrorism against that person for to force that person to endure hunger is to force them to face terror, endure suffering, and face the terrible prospect of a long and painful death.

This is your reality Republicans. This is what you are now doing to your fellow citizens and yet you still have the gall to call yourselves patriotic Americans who are compassionate? Sorry, but your words are worthless at this point. If you think that denying food to the hungry is acceptable in any way shape or form then you are not patriotic, you are not truly American, and you are certainly not compassionate. That's just the way it is and that's just the way you are and there's not a damn thing you can say at this point that will change that.

America's dilemma. By Eric Smith

For those now fretting over the apparent weakness of President Obama in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine ask yourself this question. Is this particular conflict worth the very real risk of seeing a mushroom cloud rise over New York City for make no mistake any armed conflict with Russia (or China for that matter) will eventually lead to a nuclear exchange. That's just how it is and we need to keep this in mind; especially now.

Now there's a another thing we need to keep in mind here. Ukraine is on the Russian border whereas Iraq is nowhere near ours. Our moral standing in calling for nations to respect the sovereignty of other nations and refrain from unilateral military aggression ended permanently when President George W. Bush went against over two hundred years of American precedent and not only invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq but did so under false pretenses.

As horrible as the Russian military aggression is Ukraine is, it doesn't come close to rising to the level in terms of being a violation of international law that was America's 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Russians can make, however dubious, a claim that instability in Ukraine poses a clear and present danger to the security of Russia itself. Never in a million years could America make such a claim against Iraq.

Before invading that country America could at least take the moral high ground and claim that such acts of unilateral aggression against a sovereign nation was morally wrong and a blatant violation of international law. President Bush forever destroyed this country's moral standing to make such a claim in 2003 and in so doing forever handicapped & compromised future presidents ability to properly address the very kind of aggressive conduct now being practiced by Russia's President Putin without being willing to go to general war and wiping out the whole world in a nuclear Armageddon.

That is precisely where this country is now because of the jingoistic policies of the Bush Administration a decade ago. As is the case with individuals so too is it with nations; if one wants to be taken seriously then one must practice what they preach and not preach what they don't practice. For over two hundred years America refrained from the practice of unilaterally invading a sovereign nation. It was part of our national DNA not to partake in preemptive war and as such we were on firm moral footing to call out the very kind of aggressive conduct the Russians are engaging in Ukraine.

We do not have that footing, that moral standing, now and we do not have it because an American president by the name of George W. Bush launched a preemptive war against a sovereign nation not to protect American lives and interests but solely to satisfy a personal vendetta. So if you want to blame anyone for this current state of affairs blame Bush because it was his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 without cause or justification that forever ruined America's moral standing to call out other nations for unprovoked aggression that put President Obama and American prestige in the untenable position it is today.

The Need for a New Militancy. By Eric Smith

What is the reason for today's Conservatives belated embrace of the life & legacy of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr? If anyone is even remotely knowledgeable of Conservatives (of whatever political party) long history of rejecting Dr. King's message of love of humanity & his unconditional embrace of diversity & equal rights and justice for all they will understand that their current embrace of Dr. King's life & legacy has absolutely nothing to do with admiration and everything to do with fear.

Like their ideological forebears of slavery and the segregated South, the biggest fear that Conservatives have; that they have always have since seeking to oppress we people of color, is that from the ranks of those they oppress and continue to oppress, will emerge another avenging angel of color along the lines of Nat Turner. This is what keeps Conservatives up at night and along with racism is a key reason for their advocacy of modern Lynch Law in the form of Stand Your Ground.

Like the old southern slave owners who used the benign and relatively well treated house Negroes & like the Southern segregationists who used the bought off ministers of the black church, they seek to promote members of the African American community who are non threatening; who do not believe in self defense and for whom turn the other cheek will forever be their Gospel.

What better symbol to stave the colored hand of vengeance in the face of Conservatives continued assault of the rights & dignified treatment of African Americans than Dr. King himself but not the real Dr. King mind you but rather their bleached, sanitized, and homogenized remaking of the man? "We will assail you violently without reason or cause & strip away your right to vote and be treated as equals" say Conservatives to we African Americans "yet you will never be justified in defending yourselves against our attacks because Dr. King, was all for nonviolence, for turning the other cheek, and Dr. King was a great man!"

Yet the gross miscalculation Conservatives are making is their assumption that we African Americans do not see right through their attempts to whore out the memory of Dr. King. With each passing year, as Dr. King's contemporaries die out and Dr. King himself retreats further into history, Dr. King's message becomes less and less relevant; not because he was wrong but because modern Conservatives seek more and more to use his life's example in the same way a bully puts on a pair of glasses in order to avoid being hit after he's beaten up somebody. There is but so long that a cowardly retreat behind those standards that the aggressive parties themselves refuse to live by will work.

The time is coming when new Nat Turners will emerge and these avenging angels will replace the Angel of Love that was Dr. King even while knowing that doing so may well indeed result in the extinction of the African American community as a whole. Dr. King himself said many times something to the effect that a person who is not willing to die for something has no real reason to live.

What the African American community needs today are more Nat Turners. It needs more Malcolm X's, H. Rap Browns, and Stokely Carmichaels. The rise of such figures are the only thing that will end the blood lust Conservatives & the Radical Right for these people have proven and keep proving time and time again that the word love is not part of their vocabulary; at least where their fellow citizens of color are concerned, and if we people of color have any hope of coming through this current storm intact then we must be more than willing to give what we get in whatever manner we're getting it.

We must get it through our collective skulls that we are under absolutely no obligation to be the doormats and road kill of bigots. There is nothing wrong with wanting to defend yourself, with urging your children to defend themselves. Too many of our men have been made martyrs and not nearly enough of our martyrs have lived long enough to become men. Our lives are important and our future is worth fighting for and if necessary worth dying for. The right of self defense is not the exclusive purview of any one race or culture. It is the fundamental right of all living things and as such it, life, is priceless and therefore more than worth defending at all costs.

The root of my hostility towards the GOP. By Eric Smith

Here's the deal. The Republican Party has been catering to this racist, crazy crowd that has been calling the first African American President of the United States the "n" word in every way, shape, and form since even before he first assumed office and I'm supposed to give a rats ass about appearing uncivil, super partisan, and cruel to them? Me, an African American man is supposed to give a damn what these people think? I don't think so.

The only thing I owe the Republican Party at this point is a proverbial punch in the nose and a swift kick in the ass. You don't go where that party has gone with people who look like me in general and this president in particular and expect anything approaching civility. Until the Republican Party as a whole publicly renounces and publicly disassociates itself from this crowd it will be in no position to expect, let alone demand, anything other than open hostility from the likes of me.

As long as it caters to that crowd which calls President Obama the "n" word with impunity, which calls for his lynching, which questions his legitimacy to be president, and seeks to suppress the black vote as punishment for our having voted for this first African American president in overwhelming numbers, there will be no room for compromise, no place for civility, and certainly no reason whatsoever for people like me to seek any kind of common ground.

No. As long as the Republican Party stands where it currently stands and caters to this racist crowd that is now its base, it will be rightly regarded by me and people like me for what it really is; our mortal enemy; a mortal enemy not to be accommodated with but destroyed.

A Most Bitter Irony. By Eric Smith

One of the great ironies I find in this ridiculous notion that to be young, black, and male is to be regarded as being threatening & violent is that the two faces universally recognized as symbolizing love, nonviolence, forgiveness, and reconciliation are the faces of two males of color by the names of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Each one of them was at one time a Trayvon Martin & a Jordan Davis; a young kid who happened to have dark skin struggling to survive and make a place in a world that regarded the deaths of those who looked like them as a case of addition by subtraction.

How odd indeed that these two males who's skin color alone marked them as a threat in the eyes of so many are the ones who's love of humanity made the difference between destruction and survival for not one but two nations. This irony will never escape me and I will never understand it. I am considered a threat & a symbol of violence because my skin is dark and my gender is male? Really? If that is so I ask those who think along these lines how was it possible for Fate to produce people like Dr. King & Mr. Mandela; the universal symbols of the exact opposite of what so many say people who look like me represent?

Every black male murdered either by SYG laws or by their fellow people of color has the potential of being the next Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela. That is the potential we lost in Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis. That is what we lose every time one of our young people of color is lost to violence; a potential future symbol of hope and salvation for the world for how different & more terrible our nation and our world would be if Dr. King and Mr. Mandela had suffered the same fate as young Martin and young Davis when they were each their age. A strong case can be made that had such a thing happened there would not even be a world today at all.

So think about it. The loss of every Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis has the potential of being the end of the world at some future time for who is to say that they, like Dr. King and Mr. Mandela, would not have been the ones to save it but for a madman's bullet getting in their way long before they even had the chance to try?

By Any Means Necessary! By Eric Smith

Violence is never the answer except in those extraordinary circumstances where the alternative is suicide. The parents of people of color are now confronted with the unimaginable reality that the lives of their children count for nothing and that they can be taken at whim and without any real fear of legal repercussions by anyone who need but utter three words: "I was afraid." No parent or guardian worthy of either title will willingly send their blood into the world knowing that their doing so will amount to sending their child to their deaths without eventually doing all that they can do to ensure that that child is more than equipped to defend him/herself.

The message to the African American community from these two miscarriages of justice in Florida is loud and clear; it is time to stop telling our children to turn the other cheek and it is time to urge them to repel any threat to their lives by any means necessary. This is no longer about taking the moral high ground; it is about self preservation; it is about preventing our collective extinction.

We are hemorrhaging our future with all of this disproportionate death and dying being done on the part of our youth of color. If we want our young people to cherish life then we must not hesitate to drive home to them that the first life they must cherish is their own; even if it means their being forced to take another life to preserve it.

Since the essence of the "Stand Your Ground" laws is the premise that one has a basic right to take another life if they are made fearful of losing their own, then we must instill in our youth of color that that rule applies equally to them; that just because their skin is dark doesn't make their life any less valuable or make their right to right to defend it by any means necessary any less valid.

Disgusted. Not surprised. By Eric Smith

As to this verdict in FL I am disgusted but not surprised. I have zero faith in this country's legal system when it comes to we people of color. As such, at forty eight I feel like a very old man who is living on borrowed time for no other reason than for the color of my skin and the fact that that color reduces me not only to the status of a second class citizen but that of an animal who is one step lower on the evolutionary chain in the eyes of those who administer this country's unfair system of justice. Talk is cheap. The fact is if you're a person of color in general and a male in particular you are a dead man walking no matter how old you are.

There are people out there who want you dead not because of anything you've done but only because of how you look and because your goddamned pigmentation & gender (over which you have zero control) automatically marks you in their eyes as a subhuman beast for whom your death is a case of addition by subtraction. So again, I'm disgusted but not surprised. It is what it is and the only thing worse than living under such an unjust & hellish system is to give up; to give my enemies the satisfaction of going down without a fight and not spitting in their faces as they take me down; defiant in who I am and proud of who and what I am to the end.

A Pigmentation Problem. By Eric Smith

If you want to better understand the mindset of African American Conservatives; especially those who are so open with their hatred of President Obama think of some of those studies done in the lead up to 1954's Supreme Court decision Brown versus Education which declared "Separate But Equal" to be unconstitutional. In order to establish the devastating psychological effects of racial segregation, one of these studies involved showing little black girls two dolls; one white and one black.

When those little black girls were asked which of the two dolls was beautiful; they always pointed to the white doll. When they were asked which of the two dolls was ugly, they always pointed to the black doll, and when they were asked which of the two dolls they looked at looked like them, they would first freeze, point to the black doll, and then begin to cry.

That is the place where these virulent Conservative African American haters of the first African American President of the United States really are. They can no more conceive of the idea of someone who looks like them occupying the highest office in the land than those little black girls of so long ago could conceive of those little black dolls that looked like them of being beautiful.

To them their color is a curse. It is reminder, at least to them, of their second class status as human beings. In order to feel even remotely meaningful they have to distance themselves from who they are; from what they look like because in their eyes anyone who looks like them is inferior; anyone who looks like them who succeeds is a fraud for in their eyes "inferior" people; people who look like them, have absolutely no business being President of the United States; they have no business being the First Lady.

In their eyes, if either the President or First Lady looks like them then something has to be wrong because they do not see themselves as being worthy of that high office. To them whiteness equals success whereas blackness equals failure. That's how their brains are wired. That's how they view the world and that is how they see themselves for in the end, like those little black girls of yesteryear, African American Conservatives have a pigmentation problem; that pigmentation being their own.

An Early Education. By Eric Smith

When I attended Kindergarten in 1970-71 me and a childhood buddy of mine would walk to and from school by ourselves and being that the school was something like seven to eight blocks from our homes this was quite a hike for a pair of five year old kids. Now this particular part of Freeport NY where I lived had only only allowed African Americans to buy houses there within the past ten years and black people were literally barred from moving into many sections of that town until the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed in the immediate aftermath of the race riots following the assassination of Dr. King.

Yet even though by 1970 things had begun to change, at that time they hadn't changed all that much. So me and my friend in order to get to and from school had to walk through a few sections of town that were still lily white and one day either in late 1970 or early 1971 this created a huge headache for me and my friend as we were walking home from school. I mean were just going about our business as usual trying to get home when suddenly out of nowhere a bunch of older white kids surrounded us. One of them poked me in the chest and said "Hey you (maybe he called me the "n" word and maybe he didn't. I'm not sure), this is a white neighborhood and black people aren't allowed to walk through here!"

Now I'm all of five years old and I am totally confused. I looked at him and said "What are you talking about? What do you mean black people can't walk through here? What do you mean by black people?" At that point one of them grabbed me by the arm and pointed to it. "See?!" he said. "That's black and people with this skin color like this aren't allowed to walk through this neighborhood, see?!" Now by this time these kids were getting ready to beat the living crap out of us and I don't remember exactly what me and my friend did next. The only thing I recall is me and my friend running like hell towards home & glancing back and seeing the lead white kid picking himself up off the ground. I don't know if me and my buddy hit him or barreled him over as we tried to get out of there.

I do know that when my Dad found out he erupted because as he told me, the same exact thing had happened to him when he was around my age in the early 1930's. He and no doubt some other folks did something in response to this because me and my buddy never faced a similar situation again, though I'm not sure that my parents ever really got over my having had to face something like this at so young an age. I mean my witnessing of a race riot following Dr. King's assassination had alerted me to the fact that something just wasn't right in the world.

The incident I have just described clarified just what that something was because until that particular incident, the fact that people looked different from each other just didn't register with me. It registered with me then, and it will register with me forever. I don't dwell on it but I'm never going to forget it and I sure as hell am never going to allow anyone else to tell me to forget it; to let bygones be bygones. As long as incidents like this occur I am going to call them out for exactly what they are for I owe that to my five year old self and every little black boy and little black girl who experiences the same exact thing and for the same ignorant reasons.

Fatally Flawed: Why Reaganomics can never possibly work. By Eric Smith

The fatal flaw in Republican's economic thinking (Reaganomics, trickle down economics) is that it is the economic equivalent of applying the laws of orbital mechanics to fixed wing atmospheric flight. Now how is this so? Well as is the case with fixed wing aircraft (airplanes), our economy needs to be in a state of constant forward motion (growth) in order to have sufficient airflow under its wings so as to provide lift. This comes from thrust; that thrust being the buying power of the public at large whose earnings are placed back into the economic engine in the form of the purchasing of more goods and services which in turn lead to the need to hiring more people to provide these goods and services who themselves in turn will put their earnings back into the economic engine for the purchase of more goods and services themselves; generating even more hiring, further lowering the unemployment rate, and increasing the amount of tax revenue taken in at the municipal, state, and Federal level.

The extending of unemployment benefits, food assistance, assistance for housing, healthcare, childcare; all of this puts money back into the pockets of those who need it and who in turn will use these added funds to put back into our economy. Thee Republicans, by refusing to extend unemployment benefits, cutting food assistance, seeking to undermine new laws that make healthcare more affordable, reducing or eliminating funding entirely for those programs that provide financial assistance for those who need help in paying for childcare etc; starve our economy of needed thrust by reducing the amount of revenue it takes in; a situation further compounded by its giving wildly expensive tax breaks for corporations, and tax cuts for the wealthy; all of which further starves our economy of the funds necessary to propel it forward.

Less thrust equals lower speed and a reduction in the economic airflow necessary to create lift. As a result, Republican economic policies have applied the brakes to our economy, causing it to repeatedly slow down to the point where it has stalled and crashed. This is not in dispute.

Now of course if our economy operated in a vacuum such as the vacuum of space and near Earth orbit, well their economic philosophy would work just fine because in orbit, in order to gain altitude a spacecraft must do the opposite of what an aircraft does in our atmosphere. Space, near Earth orbit space, is generally regarded to begin at around 100 miles altitude. Orbit is when forward motion equals the rate of fall and so with the Earth having a circumference of approximately 24,000 miles orbital velocity is around 17,500 miles per hour and that means it takes an object flying at that altitude roughly 90 minutes to circle the Earth.

Now the Republicans argue that the economy rises when we apply the brakes and we all know that here on Earth that means first a stall and then a crash. Yet what would happen if our economy mirrored the conditions of near Earth orbit? Well in that case, a slight braking motion would of course slow the spacecraft and cause it to rise to a higher orbit. Why? Well because in orbit the less speed you need for your rate of forward motion to equal the rate of your fall. So let's say you want to attain a stationary orbit and by that I mean an orbit where you stay over the same place all of the time.

In order to do that you have to reach an altitude of 24,000 miles; a distance that equals the Earth's circumference. You do that by braking your spacecraft and incrementally reducing its speed from 17,500 mph at 100 miles altitude to 24,000 mph at 24,000 miles up. So again, if the laws of orbital mechanics applied to our economy here on Earth, the Republicans would be right, and their economic policies would work. But our economy does not operate in a vacuum. It operates in an atmosphere and like our atmosphere it is subject to such forces as gravity and drag. You can't operate a spacecraft in our atmosphere any more than you can fly an airplane in space; I don't care how hard these Republicans argue the point; it doesn't work that way; period!

So the next time you hear someone say that the Republicans economic theories are out of this world; believe it because they are.

The Correct Lane. By Eric Smith

People like to say "stay in your own lane!" That if you're for African American rights, stick to fighting for African American rights. If you're for women's rights, stick to fighting for women's rights, and if you're for gay rights, then stick to fighting for gay rights. Well that would make some sense except for one thing; they are all the same lane. They are the same lane because each each involves the persecution of people for that over which they have zero control. No one can determine what color they are born with. No one can determine what gender they are born as, and no one can determine what their sexual orientation is when born either.

These three elements of who we are is what we enter this world with and what we will leave it with as well. We have zero control over any of it and therefore it is wrong in every conceivable sense to persecute and oppress people for that over that which they bear zero responsibility for if it is indeed a crime to be born as who you are, then everyone who is born is guilty of something since there is something about everybody that is bound to offend somebody.

Therefore it is far better for everyone to respect the rights and dignity of others; to treat them as we wish to be treated for history has shown time and time again, that the more people who do this, the fewer troubles there will be in the world. We have the right to dislike anyone for any reason; however wrong or irrational those reasons may be, but none of us has the right to use this dislike as an excuse to treat others in a way that we would not like being treated ourselves. That is where the line is and those who cross it are themselves the real problem rather than those who's color, gender, and sexual orientation give them offense.

The Purest Patriots. By Eric Smith

In late 1943, as soon as he turned 18, my late father was drafted into the US Army and it was his father, who served on the local draft board, who swore him in. Dad, along with his future wife, my Mom, was living in Cleveland OH at the time and they were already several years into their courtship which would result in their getting married in 1948; a marriage that would not end until Dad's death in 2009. Now Dad had never been to the Deep South, the segregated south, and even though he had grown up hearing of the horrors visited upon African Americans living down there, he had never experienced those horrors first hand.

Well it turns out that because of a childhood knee injury suffered years earlier, Dad was deemed physically unfit to serve overseas so his two year stint in the Army was confined to bases stateside in such places as Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. That's when Dad got his education if you will on what it was really like to be a person of color in these United States. The pain, the hurt, and the rage of having not only being unable to dine with his white fellow soldiers in the army mess halls because of his race, but also having to having to first clean up those mess halls after they and POWS from Germany & Italy had been fed before they he and his fellow soldiers of color could sit down & eat, never left him; an indignity further compounded by the fact that they were required to not only clean up those mess halls after the white soldiers and the POWS ate, but after they ate as well.

Think about it; for every meal that was served; breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Dad and his fellow soldiers of color had to clean up those mess halls three times; twice before they could sit down to eat and once afterwards. This was only a small part of it of course. There was another incident where he and some of his buddies were taking a train, a segregated train, from one base in FL to another. Well in the cabin with Dad with his buddies there was a nice young lady & her husband with whom they struck up a pleasant conversation. Since they'd been traveling for hours the plan was for them to get off the train at some station, and spend a few hours stretching their legs & refreshing, at which point they would transfer to another train to complete their journey.

After they disembarked they were directed to the colored waiting room. As they beheld the deplorable & terrible conditions of this place one of Dad's buddies said "We are soldiers in the US Army goddammit wearing the uniform of our country! We shouldn't have to take this!" With that this fellow, Dad, and the rest of them all proceeded to the white waiting room at which point they were immediately ordered out. They refused. The local sheriff was called and placed them all under arrest for violating Florida's segregation laws. By this time the Army had been notified and sent two MPs to the station.

The Army said it would handle it and handle it it did. It immediately placed Dad and his buddies back on that very train they had just exited and in the same cabin with that young lady. Only this time time there were two more people present; two armed MPs with their sidearms clearly visible. Though Dad and his buddies were fortunately not placed under arrest, they were nonetheless forced to complete their journey under armed guard.

I often asked my father how did he and his fellow soldiers of color manage to tolerate all of this crap. I mean how could he believe in this country in the face of this hypocrisy; asking its citizens of color to fight against tyranny abroad while being the victims of tyranny here at home. "It wasn't so much the country itself I believed in son; rather its promise. We took all of this abuse so we could one day help to make America better and be true to itself."

It didn't take me long to figure out that it was Dad and people like him who were the true patriots among us for they loved America not for what it did for them, which was really nothing, but rather for what it could be. In short they loved this country in spite of itself, and those who love anything in this manner posses the purest love of all for they do not have to.

So as someone who was born twenty years after he left the Army in 1945, I early on felt an obligation that I feel to this day, to do whatever I can do to ensure that future generations of people of color will not be forced to love America as Dad was forced to love it; to love it in spite of itself. The only way to guarantee is to ensure that those advances made by my Dad's generation are never taken away; that in all matters of civil & sexual rights our steps forever move forward and never back. That is the debt I owe to my father and all who figuratively marched in his shoes.

No one can tell me what a patriot is because I am the son of one. No one can ever tell me what injustice is because I am the son of a someone who was a victim of a gross injustice, and no can tell me when to stand down and when to let bygones be bygones because I know that to stand down before based on the promise of victory rather than after that victory has been secured, is to guarantee defeat and the loss of all that has been gained.

America is not yet ready to move past the issue of race and America is not yet ready to move past the issue of gender inequality, for while victory to secure full equality in this nation irrespective of race and gender is clearly in sight, it is a victory still far from secure since inequality persists in regards to both; it is merely manifested in different and generally more subtle forms. When will we know that victory has been secure? The answer is when no one else will feel compelled to tell us that we have won.

We will know it ourselves & within ourselves but until that happens, we keep fighting and we keep fighting without letup and without delay; fighting to secure those rights that are the basic rights of all people regardless of race & gender; the right to be treated with the same dignity and be accorded the same opportunity to succeed or fail on our own merits on the same level playing field; the playing field of life.

The GOP as the American Al -Qaeda. By Eric Smith

Webster's Dictionary defines terrorism as "the use of force or threats to intimidate as a political policy." Webster's also defines terrorize as "to coerce, make submit, by filling with terror." This being the case one can only conclude that today's Republican Party is to women what Al Qaeda is to the world; it is a terrorist organization engaging in the terroristic tactics of threats & intimidation to demean women, to deny them their basic reproductive rights, to dehumanize them, and to reduce them not only to the level of second class citizenship but to the level of pets & chattel; who's lives & destinies are controlled in every way, shape, and form entirely by men.

Women have every right to be terrified of this terrorist organization otherwise known as the Republican Party. Listen to the rhetoric of its leaders. Visit social media sites and see the condescending, sexist, chauvinistic assaults repeatedly launched against the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Wendy Davis, Sandra Fluke, and any woman who dares to speak up for her humanity; to assert their right to be treated as the equal of men. The Republican Party and its Conservative ancestors of whatever political party opposed women's suffrage, opposed Roe versus Wade, the Equal Rights Amendment, legislation to further criminalize sexual abuse & domestic violence, and it has stood at the forefront of denying equal pay for equal work for women.

The Republican Party has turned a blind eye and fanned the flames of hatred that has led directly to the bombings of family planning clinic and the murder & maiming of the doctors & staff who work in them. In places like Texas it has closed down many of these clinics, forcing women not only to travel hundreds upon hundreds of miles but even out of the country itself to Mexico & Canada in order to exercise those rights of reproductive freedom that our national Constitution guarantees for them right here at home.

We call out terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda for attacking freedom & seeking to suppress individual liberties all over the world. Well it is way past time to start calling out the terrorist organization that is attacking freedom and using threats & intimidation in an effort to suppress individual liberties here at home; that terrorist organization of which I speak being none other than the Republican Party itself! If we regard women as being the equal of men, as being entitled to the same rights & liberties of the male gender, then we must call out the Republican Party for being the terrorist operation that it really is. It is way past the time where we need to concern ourselves with being nice; of worrying whether or not we offend somebody or not.

They, the Republican Party, is what it is; it's actions, conduct and policies speak for themselves. It is indeed engaged in an all out war against women and its tactics are the tactics of terrorists and therefore that makes the Republican Party, at least when it comes to women, a terrorist organization.

Why Dr. King would not be a Republican today in his own words. By Eric Smith

Contrary to what too many Republicans & Conservatives say, if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today he not be one of them; he would instead be engaged in all out war against the Republican Party and all things Conservative His own words bear this out. On the matter of voting rights which the GOP is trying to suppress for people of color Dr. King wrote: 

"“So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote, I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind — it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact — I can only submit to the edict of others.”

The Republican Party and the Far Right of today is opposed to Unions & Labor whereas Dr. King was firmly on the side of both. In response to the Union busting efforts of his time he said: 

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone. Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights."

Republicans like to say that by being a Christian Dr. King would be against a woman's right to choose and speak out against Planned Parenthood. Really? Well Planned Parenthood certainly did not see Dr. King as an enemy when it awarded him its first series of Margaret Sanger Awards in 1966 at which point Dr. King said of Planned Parenthood and women's reproductive rights: 

“For the Negro, therefore, intelligent guides of family planning are a profoundly important ingredient in his quest for security and a decent life. There are mountainous obstacles still separating Negroes from a normal existence. Yet one element in stabilizing his life would be an understanding of and easy access to the means to develop a family related in size to his community environment and to the income potential he can command.”

Republicans/Conservatives today not only oppose the abolition of the death penalty but are calling for its expansion and a shortening of the appeal process that is designed to prevent an innocent from being executed. Here's what Dr. King said about the death penalty: 

“I do not think God approves the death penalty for any crime — rape and murder included. Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.”

Now of course the Republicans say that the GOP & Conservatives were the ones behind the progressive civil rights legislation of the 1960's and that it was the Democrats who were the real racists who opposed it. Well Dr. King certainly didn't think so. Reflecting back on the 1964 presidential election he wrote:

"The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right. The “best man” at this ceremony was a senator whose voting record, philosophy, and program were anathema to all the hard-won achievements of the past decade. Senator Goldwater had neither the concern nor the comprehension necessary to grapple with this problem of poverty in the fashion that the historical moment dictated. On the urgent issue of civil rights, Senator Goldwater represented a philosophy that was morally indefensible and socially suicidal.

While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulated a philosophy which gave aid and comfort to the racist. His candidacy and philosophy would serve as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes would stand. In the light of these facts and because of my love for America, I had no alternative but to urge every Negro and white person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy." This sort of sounds like the Republican leadership of today, doesn't it? 

This being so, would Dr. King now be a Republican and support the GOP's agenda? Not according to what he said here. Finally what did Dr. King think of the Conservatives patron saint Ronald Reagan who openly contemplated running for president in 1968? Well looking ahead to that prospect in the final months of his life, Dr. King didn't sound all that enthusiastic about the prospect of a Reagan presidency writing: 

"When a Hollywood performer, lacking distinction even as an actor can become a leading war hawk candidate for the Presidency, only the irrationalities induced by a war psychosis can explain such a melancholy turn of events."

So Dr. King would be a Republican today and support the GOP's agenda. Not according to him. He would be at war with the Republican Party and all things Conservatives and for proof we need only look at his own words.

To be Pro Choice. By Eric Smith

To be Pro Choice is not to be pro abortion. It is to acknowledge the unique set of circumstances attendant to the female gender in regards to the challenges and lifetime implications of being biologically endowed with the ability to bring life into the world. We men are essentially sperm donors but it is the woman to which all new life is intrinsically bound for she and she alone must bear the physical & psychological burden of bringing that child to term within her physical person over the course of many trying months. What's more, she more than any man must confront the harsh reality of a world that is often cruel, callous, and unfair and deermine whether or not that life she stands to release into the world would be better off entering it or be better served by not entering it at all.

The would be mother recognizes better than anyone that compassion minus commitment is cheap grace; that those who bring life into the world bear a special responsibility to it and so of course do those who force that life to be brought into this world so as to satisfy their own sense of morality. The Pro Life crowd that would outlaw abortions yet absolve itself of any responsibility for the person they forced to be born against the mother's will in effect feels that it is far more important for a child born under these circumstances to suffer from neglect, poverty, and deprivation than for them to be denied the chance to feel good about themselves; to puff out their chests and brag about how such decent, moral Christians they are.

These people can talk all they want about caring about the sanctity of human life but if that were true they wouldn't complain about having to help pay for it for if life is as valuable as they say it is then it is priceless. This Pro Life stance of the Far Right is at heart an exercise in child exploitation of the lowest order for these people are for the most part Pro Life for partisan purposes and partisan purposes alone. Those who are not do not go around telling a woman "I demand that you not abort your fetus but once born I insist that I not be expected to help pay for it!" That is essentially what the Pro Life crowd is saying. They want to be moral but they also want others to pay for the consequences of their forced morality on others.

To be truly Pro Life is not to merely be Pro Life before birth; it is to be Pro Life for the duration of the life of that person who is forced to be born. So since these Pro Life Right Wingers are ultimately more concerned with what's in their wallets than with the lives they would force into the world they should be more Pro Choice than anybody since every aborted poor child is one less child their tax dollars has to pay for. Oh they don't want to hear this but hear it they must and hear it they forever will, from me.

Why I Can't Judge. By Eric Smith

The only men who have even the vaguest idea of what it is to be a woman are those who have their gender changed and start living as one. Short of that we males cannot even begin to guess at the changes in biochemistry & other physiological issues that are biologically unique to the female gender. Aside from obviously not being able to grasp what it is like to be pregnant, neither do we males fully understand what it is like to be paid less for doing the same work as one of a different gender; not because we lack the same qualifications but because our genders are different.

As males we have no way of fully grasping the feelings of powerlessness that women feel when the state forces them to undergo an invasive medical procedure to which they have not given their consent. To those males who feel that a state mandated ultrasound is not invasive and does not constitute rape, let them support laws which will make penal & rectal exams mandatory to satisfy a political versus medical aim (which is the case with forced ultrasounds) and then let's see if these same males will then say that they do not feel powerless, that they do not feel violated, and that they are not being subjected to state sanctioned rape.

Since we males cannot carry a child to term over the nine months from conception to birth, we are not burdened with having to weigh whether or not it is better for the child we have carried to be aborted or be born due to horrible economic or pre natal conditions. We as men cannot really grasp the terrible emotional trauma that women contemplating the performance of an abortion must endure; of having to decide whether or not that life they are carrying would be better served by not ever being born at all rather than be condemned to endure a lifetime of ceaseless suffering; and we cannot grasp the horrible second guessing that destined to be endured by those women is who choose either route; who will for the rest of their lives be haunted by their decision if they conclude they made the wrong one.

As a man I do not have the right to tell a woman what to do in such matters because as a man I know I lack the knowledge about what life is like as a woman that necessary to make the right call. I cannot do it and I will not endeavor to try because I know that to do this is to disrespect not only every woman I have ever known but every woman who has ever lived; who has gone through life knowing exactly what it is to be a woman because she is a woman.

Rhetoric versus Reality. By Eric Smith

Tomorrow is the King Holiday and all across this nation men, women, and children will honor the life and legacy of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the official commemoration of what would have been his 85th birthday on January 15th of this year had he been granted the wish he publicly made the night before he was killed on April 4, 1968 to "live a long life." There will be parades & speeches galore, extolling him as the hero that he was and of course the Republican Party & the Far Right will be front and center in singing his praises and falsely claiming him as one of their own.

Of course this will enrage many of us who know better but in truth we who know better need not be bent out of shape by this attempt by those on the Right to revise history so as to make it shine on their current hateful conduct for this whole scene is nothing more than a simple case of rhetoric versus reality; the rhetoric of those of the Right claiming Dr. King as their own and the reality that was his life.

Let us therefore take a moment to compare the two right now; rhetoric versus reality. The Republican Party says that Dr. King was a Republican and would be a Republican today. Really? While Dr. King of course is no longer alive to speak for himself in this regard we can get a fairly good idea of where he would stand in relation to the Republican Party of today by comparing the positions & policies the Republican Party holds today versus the positions & policies Dr. King held and fought for in his lifetime:

1. Civil Rights.

The Republican Party and the Far Right thinks that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an overreach of Federal authority; that people have the individual right, according to the US Constitution, to discriminate along the lines of race if they so choose and that all questions pertaining to civil rights & discrimination should be left to the states, rather than the Federal Government, to deal with. Dr. King, from the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 to the rest of his life led countless demonstrations at the cost of many lives (ultimately including his own) to overturn legal apartheid. He correctly believed that discrimination along the lines of race was a violation of the spirit of the Constitution and an immoral indignity against the rights & liberties of individuals and that therefore not only was the Federal Government right to enforce anti discrimination laws but that it also had a duty to do so since the states had remained hostage to regional prejudices for over a century and thus been unwilling to do so themselves. Hence, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made American apartheid a violation of Federal Law.

2. Voting Rights.

The Republican Party is opposed to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and with the blessing of the US Supreme Court is now actively engaged in voter suppression across the land through the racially discriminatory imposition of Voter ID laws, voter intimidation, and the like. Dr. King led the Selma to Montgomery March in March of 1965 to secure passage of the Voting Rights Act that summer because he rightly recognized that the right to vote is inviolate in a free society and that its arbitrary denial along the lines of race undermines the key pillar of democracy by making the people powerless insofar as they will be denied a say in who represents them in public office.

3. Labor/Unions

The Republican Party is anti Labor and it is anti Union. It is engaging in a ceaseless war to undermine a person's right to collectively organize, bargain, strike, and protest for higher wages and better working conditions. Dr. King was 100% on the side of Labor and Unions. He interrupted his preparations for the upcoming Poor People's Campaign in Washington DC to publicly support striking garbage workers in Memphis TN who were being brutalized by the city leaders because they had dared to Unionize and strike in order to get higher wages and better working conditions. It was in Memphis TN that Dr. King was assassinated at the age of 39 on the night of April 4, 1968. He took a fatal bullet to his head while supporting those rights that the Republican Party is so opposed to today; the right to Unionize & bargain for higher wages and better working conditions.

4. The Poor

The Republican Party hates the poor and through its opposition to raising the minimum wage, cutting food stamps, and extending unemployment benefits, its bestial treatment of the weakest & least fortunate among us knows no bounds. Dr. King on the other hand was at war with poverty all of his adult life and never wasted an opportunity to highlight its corrosive effect on the human soul from the poorest slums in the Deep South to the most oppressive ghettos in the North. He died while deep in preparation for a Poor Campaign in Washington DC scheduled for May of 1968 to highlight America's inexcusable tolerance of poverty to the world.

5. War

Not only does the Republican Party love war, it believes in preemptive war; striking at nations that pose no immediate threat to America or its interests. For proof we only need to look at President Reagan's invasion of Grenade in the Fall of 1983 or President George W. Bush's uncalled for & disastrous war in Iraq that he started in 2003. Being a man of peace Dr. King opposed war; especially when the resources to fight wars drained the resources necessary to fight injustice and poverty here at home. In speaking out against the Vietnam War on April 4, 1967 (one year to the day before he was killed) Dr. King said the following:

"A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : 'Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.'

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The 'tide in the affairs of men' does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: 'Too late.'"

All of the above positions held by the Republican Party and the Far Right today are thus diametrically opposed to everything believed in and fought for by Dr. King. I won't even go into how he would have reacted to the GOP's turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the racist hatred being directed at our first African American president, Barack Obama, in the form of comparing him to an African witch doctor, hanging him in effigy from a tree, calling for the murder of him and his wife & children, and waving a Confederate flag in front of the White House. Does anyone in their right mind think that Dr. King would have anything to do with a political party that not only tolerates but encourages such conduct?

Does anyone believe for a minute that he would not call out the madness of African American Republicans/Conservatives who have crazily cast their lot with such hateful individuals just as those bought off African Americans of Dr. King's time publicly sided with those southern segregationists who brutalized & murdered the Civil Rights warriors back then? Some things are so utterly ridiculous that again we need only compare the rhetoric to the reality to prove the absurdity of such blatant falsehoods for in such a contest reality always wins.

So in closing I ask you to remember the words of the late, great African American post Carl Wendell Hines who in his 1971 poem "Now that he is Safely Dead" prophetically foretold of the day when the enemies of Dr. King would seek to hijack his legacy and claim it as their own when he was no longer here to call them out on their unjust theft and disgusting distortion of who he was & what he stood and fought for in life.

"Now that He is Safely Dead."

"Now that he is safely dead,
Let us Praise him.
Now that he is safely dead,
Let us Praise him.
Build monuments to his glory.
Sing Hosannas to his name.

Dead men make such convenient Heroes.
They cannot rise to challenge the images
We would fashion from their Lives.
It is easier to build monuments
Than to make a better world.

So now that he is safely dead,
We, with eased consciences, will
Teach our children that he was a great man,
Knowing that the cause for which he
Lived is still a cause
And the dream for which he died
Is still a dream."

Echoes of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney

When I hear these Republicans, Libertarians, and Tea Party member call upon this nation to follow the US Constitution as it was originally framed and their belief in state's rights and the right of states to secede from the Union I hear again the words of then Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney who wrote in his majority opinion of the infamous Dred Scott case of 1857 the following: "It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in regard to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted; but the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

In short, the GOP & the Far Right's call to follow the Constitution as it was originally written has nothing to do with expanding Liberty and everything to do with limiting the full enjoyment of Liberty to those with white skin. From their ill treatment of President Obama to their mistreatment of people of color across the board through voter suppression & policies which hurt the poor who are disproportionately people of color, the racist white supremacy mindset of Chief Justice Taney is the mental mantra of the Republican Party & the Far Right today. It is a mindset which believes as Taney did that people of color in these United States have no rights that white people are bound to respect.

If you want to understand why the Republican Party & the Far Right treats President Obama and people of color as they do, read again the last sentence of Chief Justice Taney's decision in Dred Scott. That sums it perfectly and if they deny this to be the case then merely point to their treatment of President Obama, the policies they promote, and the devastating effects these policies have had and continue to have on our citizens of color in these United States. It is as simple as that.