New Common Sense: Inflaming Faction at the NAACP

 

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New Common Sense Applying First Principles to the Issues of Today At Heritage Obama guts welfare reform—illegally. Supreme Court and Obamacare: Judicial activism or judicial review? Around the Country Forget Julia: Meet Henry. The prolonged death of constitutionalism: The sad triumph of the Progressives. Quick Thoughts The taxman cometh: How the IRS is gearing up to enforce Obamacare. Question of the week: What should government do to stimulate the economy in a recession? From the bookshelf:  In Political Woman: The Big Little Life of The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick, Peter Collier traces the career of Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan’s United Nations Ambassador and the most forceful presence in the Administration, outside of the President himself, in shaping the Reagan Doctrine and fighting the Cold War to a victorious conclusion. Check out Collier's lecture at Heritage.   Inflaming Faction at the NAACP Last week, both Governor Mitt Romney and Vice President Joseph Biden made headlines with separate speeches before the annual meeting of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The contrasting approaches of the two illustrate principled differences in contemporary politics, approaches that stretch back to the American Founding. For his part, Romney proposed conservative policy solutions on issues concerning education, the family, jobs and the economy. His entire approach was tied together with an appeal to a common faith in God. Romney also avoided the temptation to attack illegal immigration as the cause of black misery. Instead, he offered a color-blind, free-market approach to a common national problem. By contrast, Biden turned up the volume on Lyndon Johnson’s notorious 1965 Howard University speech. The Vice President blamed current racial problems on whites, both distant and contemporary. Today’s solutions, Biden said, are the same as those proposed in LBJ’s Great Society: government-mandated preferences in employment and college admission, racially-based gerrymandering, and a growing host of welfare programs. At Howard University in 1965, LBJ listed depressing statistics about the African-American community: growing racial discrepancies in unemployment, income, poverty, infant mortality, and the decline of the black family. “Ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice” caused these problems. African-Americans could do nothing for themselves to alleviate these problems. Instead, they must wait for a series of government programs to create equality of results.  This approach of blaming others, inciting fear, and promoting salvific government programs attempts to seduce black voters into accepting their misery and a permanent isolation from democratic politics. Essentially, these are opposing solutions to the problems plaguing the African-American community. Shall we advocate for freedom and opportunity or inflame factionalism? The American Founders provide guidance on this question. As Madison explains in the Federalist Papers, factions are contrary to liberty and threaten self-government. A faction is defined as a group bent on achieving its aims by depriving others of their rights or undermining the public interest. The most feared and enduring of factions, of course, is the division between the rich and the poor. That stand-off has destroyed self-government from the beginning of society. To mollify the problem of faction—especially the faction between the rich and poor—Madison urged that modern, free, democratic republics should base themselves on the protection of individual rights. With this shift, the United States would change the terms of the political debate. Instead pitting the rich against the poor, government would protect rights and allow people to pursue happiness and acquire wealth. The founders never defended existing wealth or class structures but the means to improving one’s condition: the right to acquire property, the right to conscience, to religion, to opinions of all sorts. Madison showed how freedom could foster a prosperous, thriving, and dynamic society. America would offer to the world a horizontal expansion of opportunities based on individual rights, in place of the vertical clash of rich and poor based on class. Certainly, if any group in American history has been the victim of a majority faction, it has been African-Americans, whether in slavery or in freedom. The answer to this injustice is not more factionalization, as Biden’s NAACP remarks call for, but more freedom. The left’s rhetoric would drive us back into the rich-poor confrontation that America was established to negate.                        Forward this message to a Friend!   Quote of the Week                            Visit ConstitutionOnline.com. Your first stop for clause by clause analysis of the Constitution. Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. ~ James Madison For more quotes, visit westillholdthesetruths.org About The Heritage Foundation Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institute -- a think tank -- whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense. The Heritage Foundation | 214 Massachusetts Ave NE, Washington, DC 20002 | 202.546.4400