Althouse: "I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman..."

August 18, 2011

"I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman..."

"... to kind of lead people on the underground railroad away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility."

50 comments:

Curious George said...: You fight an uphill battle Col. West against generations of liberal polices. God speed!; 8/18/11, 8:40 AM
Andy said...: As the world better realizes how embarrassing the various leaders of the Tea Party are, I wonder if their supporters will feel appropriately embarrassed.; 8/18/11, 8:47 AM
Jeff in Oklahoma said...: Lt. Col. West displayed admirable courage, once again, in pointing out a subject that baffles me to no end.

Why is it that the black community is so beholden to the democrats?

Unemployment among blacks currently stands at 16%. For decades, the democrat party has held almost monopoly power in the major urban areas of the east coast and mid-west.

Can anyone offer any proof that any of the democratic policies have made any significant progress towards improving the lives of blacks in America?

I grew up just north of Detroit, and continue to be astounded at the vast ineptness of state and local government. I am more astounded that voters continue to elect proponents of a system with such a miserable track record.

Of course the GOP woefully inept. If they can't get a candidate elected running against abject failure, they are hopeless as well.; 8/18/11, 8:51 AM
The Dude said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/18/11, 8:52 AM
cubanbob said...: Andy R. said...
As the world better realizes how embarrassing the various leaders of the Tea Party are, I wonder if their supporters will feel appropriately embarrassed.

8/18/11 8:47 AM

Compared to whom? Obama, Pelosi and Reid? The world laughs at them.; 8/18/11, 8:53 AM
traditionalguy said...: Andy R...Go be embarrassed by yourself.

The one thing West exposes is the Black Male in a superior position no longer needs to be whipped by Liberal Overseers.

Once Black Males like Col. West have regained their self respect and sound minds they discover that they can live quite well without liberal Overseers threatening them into a party line.

Then what are we all supposed to be guilty about? I just don't get the eternal white guilt trip that you assume is always there.; 8/18/11, 8:55 AM
MikeinAppalachia said...: Andy R-
Is that just your "thought for the day", are you saying West is both a "Tea Party leader" and embarrassing, or are you commenting on the wrong thread?
If West is equivalent to Tubman, who is the modern John Brown?; 8/18/11, 8:57 AM
Cedarford said...: Andy R. said...
As the world better realizes how embarrassing the various leaders of the Tea Party are, I wonder if their supporters will feel appropriately embarrassed.

============
By "the rest of the world" who do you mean? The progressive Jewish thinkers of France, now a hunted species on streets and on trains - thanks to the MultiKulti mass immigration they championed? The Labour Party of the UK...appalled for 40 years running about what they see over in America while their own society crumbles?
Or do you mean the bankrupt socialists of Greece and Spain?

The Chicommies? Vlad Putin wakes up one day after ordering another opposition journalist "accidentally falling from a high rise" is stating Michelle Bachmann is whackadoodle?
Or do you have grave concern that the corrupt, blood-drenched Mexicans think Sarah Palin has an IQ down at a level of the dregs of Mexico they are dumping in America?; 8/18/11, 9:01 AM
Anonymous said...: Libs hate it when "they" get all uppity.

Col. West is impressive, but I'm more impressed with Starr Parker.

Others, are impressed with Maxine Waters and Sheila Jackson Lee.; 8/18/11, 9:03 AM
garage mahal said...: As the world better realizes how embarrassing the various leaders of the Tea Party are, I wonder if their supporters will feel appropriately embarrassed.

You'd think so. The Tea Party is now less popular than atheists and muslims. Ouch.; 8/18/11, 9:05 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: From Ann Coulter's new column, which explains it all:

When blacks were only four generations out of slavery, their illegitimacy rate was about 23 percent (lower than the white illegitimacy rate is now). Then Democrats decided to help them! Barely two generations since LBJ's Great Society programs began, the black illegitimacy rate has tripled to 72 percent.

Meanwhile, the white illegitimacy rate has septupled, from 4 percent to 29 percent.

Instead of a "War on Poverty," it should have been called a "War on the Family."

The vast and permanent underclass created by the welfare state is a great success story for the Democratic Party, which now has a loyal constituency of deadbeats who automatically vote for the Democrats to keep their Trojan horse "benefits" flowing.

It's the Democrats' "heroin dealer" model of government.

Apparently, it takes a lot of government workers to minister to the poor, inasmuch as government employment has skyrocketed in tandem with the family's disintegration. As long as Democrats are serving their principal constituency -- recipients of taxpayer money -- they don't care what happens to the rest of society.

They champion any mob that will increase their political power. Liberals promote welfare dependency, class warfare, endless government programs staffed with public sector workers, street protests, coddling criminals and physical attacks on their ideological opponents. This is how they create reliable Democratic voters.

True, government employees are doing jobs we don't want done, can never be fired, are bankrupting the country and periodically break out in mob violence.

True, also, that the children of broken families sometimes burn city blocks to the ground or kill their great-grandmothers with swords. But what a voting bloc!; 8/18/11, 9:07 AM
I'm Full of Soup said...: Libruls are desperate to discredit Tea Party and black conservatives who dare to stray off the librul plantation.

West is the black man we should have put in the White House.; 8/18/11, 9:09 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: You'd think so. The Tea Party is now less popular than atheists and muslims. Ouch.

You're not worried about the Tea Party because it's unpopular, garbage.

You're worried because it changed the entire political debate in 2010.

President Obama isn't spending so much time calling the Tea Party names because it's ineffective, either. The Tea Party has choked off his borrow and spend binge.

You're whistling out your ass and dissembling as usual, garbage.

You have every right to fear the Tea Party, garbage. They are going to defeat you over the long run. They're winning elections.

Gov. Walker is complete fucked, right garbage?; 8/18/11, 9:11 AM
Michael said...: Andy R: where do you buy a hat like that? The ones i see always have the bill in front.; 8/18/11, 9:12 AM
Andy said...: Yeah, Alan West and Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint are serious responsible intelligent rational adult leaders. Right.; 8/18/11, 9:14 AM
Cedarford said...: Jeff in Oklahoma only hints at the level of black displacement from the economy...the outmoded 16% "black unemployment rate" of recently laid off workers does not even come close to describing actual black unemployment in America from social policies and both Parties selling out the US worker to China and importing mass unskilled illegals..
And the worst off group - are the black males aged 18-30 - with effective unemployment pushing above 50% in some cities.

Which is poised to worsen as the government employee unions are the employer of 1st and last recourse in now bankrupt blue cities now in the process of losing the last deficit funding credit, the last taxes they can squeeze before businesses leave enmass (already too late in California, Illinois, Connecticut).

The broke states and cities - gut welfare and do mass layoffs of fat, slow-moving black mommas at motor vehicles, diversity data entry clerks at the public schools??

You are looking at dynamite.; 8/18/11, 9:15 AM
Curious George said...: "Andy R. said...
Yeah, Alan West and Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint are serious responsible intelligent rational adult leaders. Right."

Glad to see you have come around. And in just one thread!; 8/18/11, 9:18 AM
The Crack Emcee said...: No, Missa West, don't do it! Dey loves da plantation, blacks and whites alike. Don't let 'em fool you:

Let a black man call hisself an American and he get an argument everywhere he go! Sho nuff!

Let him become a black Republican and he catch hell five ways from Sundays! Naw, the liberals are determined to tell blacks what to do, keepin' dem as Democraps, and the conservatives will as well. What they cain't think of yet is dat somethin' new:

A black man as a Free Man.

I tell 'em. I tell 'em all da time, but I get shouted down because dey gots da numbers. But I also tell 'em numbers don't mean shit except in math. Isaac Newton was alone, but he was right and I's gonna be found to be right, too, yessir.

There ain't no African-Americans, except on de plantation.; 8/18/11, 9:21 AM
Scott M said...: Yeah, Alan West and Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint are serious responsible intelligent rational adult leaders. Right.

Really? Do you suppose Pelosi, Reid, and Biden are rational, intelligent adults?; 8/18/11, 9:22 AM
SteveR said...: I can put the "ignore idiot commenter block" on Andy R; 8/18/11, 9:27 AM
cubanbob said...: garage mahal said...
As the world better realizes how embarrassing the various leaders of the Tea Party are, I wonder if their supporters will feel appropriately embarrassed.

You'd think so. The Tea Party is now less popular than atheists and muslims. Ouch.

8/18/11 9:05 AM

How serious can anyone take a poll conducted the house organs of the democrat-communist party, The New Pravda and Izvestia? Ouch.; 8/18/11, 9:28 AM
cubanbob said...: Andy R. said...
Yeah, Alan West and Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint are serious responsible intelligent rational adult leaders. Right.

8/18/11 9:14 AM

Compared to Obama bin Biden they most certainly are.
Compared to any democrat-communist they most certainly are.; 8/18/11, 9:31 AM
Tim said...: "Yeah, Alan West and Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint are serious responsible intelligent rational adult leaders. Right."

As compared to Obama, Biden, Reid, and Pelosi? You obviously didn't think this through.

Please try harder next time.; 8/18/11, 9:36 AM
Anonymous said...: It looks like Wall Street is trying to spoil Obama's vacation again.; 8/18/11, 9:37 AM
Tim said...: Oops...need to hit the "refresh button more often - missed cubanbob's response.; 8/18/11, 9:38 AM
Scott M said...: Andy R. said,

Yeah, Alan West and Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint are serious responsible intelligent rational adult leaders. Right.

D'oh! Your forgot to include that childish, unserious, unintelligent, irrational Joe Wilson. You remember him, right? That idiot that yelled, "You lie!" at the President when Obama claimed illegal immigrants would not benefit from Obamacare?

You know...that same Joe Wilson that ended up being 100% correct in his statement? That guy?; 8/18/11, 9:45 AM
Tim said...: The evidence is in.

It is beyond denying, except for the idiot "O.J. Jury" that comprises the Democrat base, that the modern welfare state as envisioned and then enacted by liberals has created the moral hazards necessary to destroy and then enslave first the Black and then all the other poor in America to the state.

In exchange for state-sponsored dependency, Democrats get 90% of the Black vote, and a majority of other lower income racial groups.

This is so obvious, and so well known, it has become a tiresome subject - it's like discussing the hazards of meth addiction.

Yet, like efforts to stop meth addiction, the fight against the enslaving welfare state must continue. If we should win that fight, let us remember that the leading edge of western liberal "thought" is where civilization begins to crumble and no longer has any meaning.; 8/18/11, 9:50 AM
Anonymous said...: "...serious responsible intelligent rational adult leaders. Right."

Because a government spending less than its tax receipts is utterly and completely irrational. Right.

Because up is down and down is sideways. Right.

Because Andy R. has many substantive arguments in his favor. Right.; 8/18/11, 9:53 AM
Shanna said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/18/11, 9:59 AM
Chennaul said...: Oh ya!

Someone who remembers -

Harriet Tubman was a gun totting Republican!; 8/18/11, 10:00 AM
Shanna said...: As the world better realizes how embarrassing the various leaders of the Tea Party are, I wonder if their supporters will feel appropriately embarrassed.

The “tea party” is loose configuration of people who have some agreements. I don’t think its “leaders” (who are mostly politicians trying to cash in on an existing group and as such have a combination of various problems like all politicians) have ever been terribly important.

All political leaders are only important insomuch as they are sucessful in running the country well, using conservative/liberal/whatever principles.

It is the ideas that matter. Always.; 8/18/11, 10:00 AM
Sal said...: “The Republican Party has not done very well in reaching out..."

Can someone give one specific example of a way Republicans could "reach out" to blacks. I mean some specific policy Republicans could adopt.; 8/18/11, 10:07 AM
Trooper York said...: Well I think the W tipped his caddy.

That's reaching out.; 8/18/11, 10:19 AM
Cedarford said...: MarkG said...
“The Republican Party has not done very well in reaching out..."

Can someone give one specific example of a way Republicans could "reach out" to blacks. I mean some specific policy Republicans could adopt.

==================
Concerned with 50% black male unemployment, the Republicans announce they will impose a 20% tariff on Chinese goods. The tariff will be used to directly pay off the China debt...but the side benefit is expected to be the creation of millions of new jobs in shut down factories in Blue Cities across America.

The gesture to blacks would immediately be denounced by the Freed Traders and "Job Creator" wealthy as "hating freedom, cutting profit from cheaper Chinese labor."; 8/18/11, 10:20 AM
edutcher said...: If Robert Cook ever wants to get into real crimes committed by either party (not just the ones he gets out of the Daily Worker), Shout's quote of Ann Coulter's column is all he should need.

What the Democrats have done to black people in this country in the last 40 years cements their title as the Party of Slavery.

Andy R. said...

Yeah, Alan West and Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint are serious responsible intelligent rational adult leaders. Right.

So glad you recognize it.

MarkG said...

"The Republican Party has not done very well in reaching out..."

Can someone give one specific example of a way Republicans could "reach out" to blacks. I mean some specific policy Republicans could adopt.

They have been so radicalized by academia, the media, and race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, they expect something tailored for them specifically. They've also been taught that anyone who wants to stay out of trouble, study and work hard is "acting white", and a traitor to blacks.

They don't realize getting the economy moving is only part of the job. The other is getting educated and learning to live an ordered, respectable life.

Bill Cosby and some others are starting to talk about that, but the Cornel Wests try to shout them down.; 8/18/11, 10:21 AM
bagoh20 said...: I thought that Obama's election would turn out to be a very bad thing for Blacks, because I expected him to fail due to his being informed by a terribly flawed world view, but I'm sensing that it might turn out to be a very liberating thing for Blacks to see that the man is what matters, not his skin color. I'm sensing a maturing phase, where people won't expect to "get some Obama money from his stash",; 8/18/11, 10:22 AM
bagoh20 said...: "impose a 20% tariff on Chinese goods. The tariff will be used to directly pay off the China debt...but the side benefit is expected to be the creation of millions of new jobs in shut down factories in Blue Cities across America."

So tax the poorest Americans 20% and give it to the Chinese, with the side effect of making American manufacturing lazier and less competitive while giving every other nation except the U.S and China a huge competitive advantage.

Yea, that's the ticket.; 8/18/11, 10:29 AM
ricpic said...: I don't believe for a second that blacks are enslaved by a plantation mentality. Blacks, for the mostpart, have made a conscious decision to vote their self-interest, which amounts to living off the state.; 8/18/11, 10:41 AM
edutcher said...: But, if the Welfare State model is failing, living off the state is no longer in their self-interest.; 8/18/11, 10:46 AM
Sal said...: West doesn't impress me. He's looking for someone to do something for blacks, rather than blacks doing something for themselves. Ok, so he's got a different political twist. Big deal.; 8/18/11, 10:49 AM
Carol_Herman said...: Choo-Choo?

And, by the way, corporations aren't plantations.

There's also no leading, if when you look over your shoulder ... you're not being followed by anyone. Not even the FBI.; 8/18/11, 11:03 AM
Alex said...: I fail to see how modern blacks are any different then Western European whites who continue to vote themselves the welfare state. Are those whites on the plantation too?; 8/18/11, 11:12 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: I fail to see how modern blacks are any different then Western European whites who continue to vote themselves the welfare state. Are those whites on the plantation too?

Nice distraction move. Doesn't have anything to do with this topic.; 8/18/11, 11:21 AM
The Crack Emcee said...: Cedarford,

Can someone give one specific example of a way Republicans could "reach out" to blacks. I mean some specific policy Republicans could adopt.

Just explain the history of the two parties clearly. How one is determined to exploit race and the other isn't.

I know black people pretty-darned-well, and that would do it.; 8/18/11, 11:25 AM
Cedarford said...: Crack - I don't see 150-40 years ago history lessons as winning many arguments on where a person's voting interests lie today. It is like saying "no" to some union wanting a 30% boost in pay and benefits this year - who is busy lecturing you about history - the days when workers had no rights and labored in poor compensation in unsafe conditions while the owners sucked up the wealth generated from labor's productivity.
It may be true, but is the 30% boost in my interest?? That is the salient thing, not the history.

To make a "what's in it for me??" argument - Republicans, independents, centrist democrats need to say that the welfare state is unsustainable. And so is free trade that guts America of jobs for whites and blacks and hispanics. And the solution is to do everything we can to reindustrialize America and have jobs in cities other than government employee jobs or welfare offices. That we want blacks to come onboard that the highest black goal ought to be a gainfully employed black workforce that is gaining skills and offering stable families and a better future for their kids and their careers.

That includes some stuff that has to change that Republicans hate - like the Freedom!! of the wealthiest 5% to outsource labor to gain further wealth for themselves...the anger that tariffs might mean less cheap ChinaStuff and "even the poor" might have a smaller shopping cart full of Chinatoys to get America working to make stuff again.; 8/18/11, 12:43 PM
chickelit said...: @cedarford: There's a chink in your armor. Americans, especially the 20% bottom rung, economically, don't want to stop shopping at Wal-Mart. You're essentially saying to them "no more flat screens for you butster"! They vote too.

I've long thought that the Chinese and US governments conspired to play less than fair with our respective currencies, pegging it to the dollar. The yuan should have risen against the dollar long ago. This is the normal mechanism by which your hated Chinese goods would become more expensive. Also, the time will come when their jump-started economy reaches self-suffiency (couple with Russian natural resopurces) in which case they tell us "adios, MoFo."; 8/18/11, 5:45 PM
Alex said...: Good point about the Chinese suppressing the yuan's value. That way we keep paying them in yuans instead of dollars.; 8/18/11, 6:12 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: Cedarford,

Crack - I don't see 150-40 years ago history lessons as winning many arguments on where a person's voting interests lie today.

Dude, why'd you ask if you're just gonna hand me that shit? I'm not marketing to you. Did you see the Maxine Waters thread? Black people voted for Obama because it felt good - that does not indicate a serious desire to grapple with the issues. I said I know black people and I do:

Show that Democrats have been exploiting race, starting at the beginning all the way up to today, and watch what happens.

I really don't know what the point is, of asking black conservatives about how to attract blacks, if white conservatives are always going to replace what the blacks say with what the whites "think." I mean, if white conservatives knew so much about how to attract blacks, they wouldn't be asking, riiight?; 8/18/11, 6:20 PM
Heart_Collector said...: "I really don't know what the point is, of asking black conservatives about how to ATTRACT BLACKS, if white conservatives are always going to replace what the blacks say with what the whites "think." I mean, if white conservatives knew so much about how to attract blacks, they wouldn't be asking, riiight?"

Blondes.; 8/18/11, 9:32 PM
Anonymous said...: Why is Garage Mahal a racist? Explain yourself, Garage Mahal.; 8/19/11, 4:50 PM