"Either we go up together or we go down together."
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Few things provoke my ire like ignorant people: people who lack a sense of self and of history; people who are crippled by a naivete so sizeable that they mistake their enemy for their friend and their champion for their foe. Few things provoke my ire like a black conservative.
We've been over this story before. Enslaved African Americans were emancipated with the help of a proclamation made by the leader of the federal government: a liberal who recognized that the preservation of any union is contingent upon subordinate states submitting to a supreme federal power. School segregation was outlawed by a Supreme Court composed of "activist judges."
Civil rights, voting rights and the right to protest for right were all secured for black Americans by national legislation sponsored by the liberal party. At every critical juncture in the struggle for freedom and justice, it was Washington that came, however reluctantly, to the aid of black Americans. How, then, can any African American not fully support a strong national government? In other words, how can any black person not be a liberal?
The essence of modern liberalism is a belief that the federal government should stand up for the downtrodden. Liberalism seeks to champion the damned, the desperate and the denied. And who knows better than black Americans what it is like to be damned, desperate and denied? Well, Native Americans, but you get my point.
Black Americans have come this far only by the grace of those who desired to help the helpless and empower the disempowered. Those of us who now criticize government policies which seek to achieve that same goal have, unfortunately, lost sight of what it means to be black.
Throughout the course of history the threat to human progress and liberty has been too much concentrated federal power. The Founders chose to secure liberty by limiting the power of the federal government.
But in the modern political era, we have been witness to a far different phenomenon: Liberty is most infringed when the government possesses neither the will nor the power to secure it through legislation or even war.
Liberty is most often denied when the federal government refuses to provide adequate opportunity for advancement and refuses to enact measures to alleviate poverty, the greatest current threat to freedom.
Conservatives, though, often portray themselves as a freedom-loving people. As Ainsley Hayes says in The West Wing when speaking in opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, "I shuddered to think I wasn't a first-class citizen before the ERA was proposed. One more law means just a little less freedom."
But the fact is that some in our society really weren't first-class citizens no matter how much we may shudder to think so. We ought to blame the policies that made it that way rather than criticizing the policies that attempt to correct it.
And we need to come to realize that in many cases laws preserve freedoms, not curtail them.
Some may still ask why a black person cannot be a conservative. Why can they not be pro-life, pro-tax cuts and pro-conservative values? A considerable portion of African Americans are, in fact, pro-life, pro-tax cuts and in favor of more traditional family values. There is nothing about any of those stances that is exceptionally anti-black.
But there is still a reason that upwards of 90 percent of black Americans vote for liberal candidates. And it's not because they are ignorant or stupid, as conservatives so often claim. It is because we recognize that the greatest capacity of a federal government is not to provide basic services or even national security but to actively promote those ideals on which this country is founded: liberty and equality.
The greatest capacity of the federal government is to serve as an instrument of progress and to cure society of the ills which have plagued it since its beginning. Some favor a government which is as far removed from our lives as possible. But a government that far removed can hardly solve the problems we as a society face.
Bunyan, John not Paul, said that he would rather spend all his days in jail than make a butchery of his conscience. I contend that the conscience of the black conservative is a butchered conscience; one in constant conflict with itself, its heritage and its people. And I, too, would rather endure eternal suffering than make a butchery of my conscience.
Anthony Collins is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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