How can America unite again to do great things if we are led by people who believe America suffers from a great sickness of the soul, an original sin that dates back to her birth as a nation?
Consider.
After his long night of prayer for “the right verdict” to be pronounced — Derek Chauvin was convicted on all three counts — Joe Biden stepped before the White House cameras to tell us what it all meant.
George Floyd’s death, said Biden, “was a murder in the full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism… that is a stain on our nation’s soul — the knee on the neck of justice for Black Americans.”
Astonishing. Biden is saying that when Chauvin knelt on the neck of George Floyd for nine minutes as the life drained out of him, the world, for once, was getting a good, close look at the diseased soul of America.
What Chauvin was doing to Floyd, said the president of the United States, is a reflection of the kind of justice America delivers to Black Americans.
This is no aberration, Biden was saying. This is the routine reality.
Biden was introduced by Kamala Harris, who said much the same:
“America has a long history of systemic racism. Black Americans and Black men in particular have been treated throughout the course of our history as less than human.”
At Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield delivered what The Wall Street Journal called, “a recitation of America’s sins (that) could have come from China’s Global Times.”
Said Thomas-Greenfield:
“I have… seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles. … Racism is the problem of the racist. And it is the problem of the society that produces the racist.”
What our diplomat to the world is saying is that our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights are interwoven with white supremacy and that America, to this day, continues to breed racists.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at a Congressional Black Caucus event after the verdict, turned her eyes heavenward in gratitude:
“Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice….For being there to call out to your mom — how heartbreaking was that … And because of you … your name will always be synonymous with justice.”
Implication: Floyd died to redeem America of her original sin of racism.
All in all, quite a commentary on our leaders.
For, again, our president and vice president are saying that this people and country still suffer from a sickness of the soul that dates back to its formative days.
The 1960s radicals who vilified our country as “Amerika” were rightly called “anti-American.” Today, the difference between what they said about America and what our highest elected leaders are saying is hard to discern.
Our enemies have picked up on this. In Anchorage, after Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Beijing out for repression in Hong Kong and “genocide” in Xinjiang, China’s foreign minister was right back in his face.
You Americans should look to your own sins and clean up your house before lecturing the world on political morality, he said. Today, that Chinese foreign minister could cite Biden and Harris as his chief witnesses that America is a nation sick in its soul.
We hear our leaders’ attacks on America. Where is their defense?
What other nation has provided the same measures of personal and political freedoms and material blessings for 40 million Black people as has the United States?
If people of color are treated “as less than human” in America, as Harris says, why are so many people of color seeking desperately to get across our Southern border to build their future here?
What is the real truth about race in America that goes unmentioned in the mainstream media’s endless hunt for encounters between Black men and white cops?
The main perpetrators of violent crimes against Black Americans — are other Black Americans. Black men, ages 16 to 40, are 3% of the U.S. population but commit roughly a third of America’s violent crimes.
Defund police, restrict police, remove police and you will get more of what the police prevent — crimes, especially violent crimes, in your community.
When Biden and Harris spoke of “systemic racism” afflicting our society, they were not describing their enlightened selves. And it was Hillary Clinton who identified the people the leftist elites have in mind:
“You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. … The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. … Some of those folks… are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
What Clinton, Biden and Harris are all saying is that, though the moral sickness of racism pervades our society, we are the vaccinated ones.
Republished with gracious permission from Mr. Buchanan (April 2021).
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Amen
Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton had a vision of a black box allowing satan into our homes. Saint Padre Pio had a disdain for television and the cinema. Recently, I was invited to dine at one of my left-leaning friends homes. Throughout the evening the television, tuned to an American-bashing station, was quietly providing the background ambiance. The evening came to a close with my friend exploding with “BLM has no Marxists; this is a racist country! No one is trying to take away your guns!” Rather than argue, and knowing that I can’t compete with the TV, I left shortly thereafter. At first I was mad, but now I’m just sad. I cannot understand not loving our country.
It appears that to be a successful white person in America, you’re a racist who got to where you are in life by using black labor, discrimination, and your so-called “white privilege!” I don’t know about the rest of you but I worked very hard just to obtain my piece of the American Dream.
I spent 12 years in the Armed Forces serving my country side by side with many people of color. We were a unit during duty hours but naturally mostly separated by choice on our free time. There is a deep cultural divide concerning norms and mores between the races. Yes we are all equal but different in many ways that will continue no matter what. I still feel the USA gives anyone a better chance to succeed then any other nation on this Earth. Do we have problems, hell yes, and we’ve done some rotten things in the past. These have been exposed and usually dealt with through education and legislation.
Great commentary by Pat Buchanan.
With some rare exceptions, anti-American intellectuals have been leading the Western world for many decades. These globalist ideologists have spread their messianic messages in an ever-changing mélange and various shades of democracy, socialism, and conservatism. The leftist political parties have gained the support of the Western intellectual “elites,” who then merely perform an intermediary role in disseminating “progressive” ideas. The class consists of more groups and professions than journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists, radio and TV commentators, writers, cartoonists, or artists — it also includes the political leaders. They all may be masters of the technique of expressing and conveying ideas but are usually amateurs as far as the essence of what they say is concerned. But that does not seem to be a problem — their handlers know better.
With these “leaders,” we are going to be delivered into a maelstrom, and if we survive, it is not likely to be as a republic of free citizens enjoying inalienable rights.
I am reading “The Dust of Death” by Os Guinness, who believes that we are in a battle between those who believe in the principles represented in the American Revolution and the founding documents of the US and those who believe in the principles espoused by those who led the French Revolution. The Americans built a government around the notion of fallible and selfish people with certain God-given rights in spite of their flaws, while the French and the thinkers behind the revolution thought that human beings are perfectible, if only we can get the right system.