Rarely do I wait with anticipation to hear what Barack Obama has to say on any subject.\u00a0 After more than six years of his political presence we\u2019ve come to expect that we can place little faith in anything he might say on any subject because he has a totally different view of what otherwise reasonable people might believe.<\/p>\n
However, as I watched the Obamas climb the steps of Air Force One on Saturday morning, March 7, on their way to Selma, Alabama to participate in the 50th <\/sup>anniversary of the historic march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, now widely referred to as \u201cBloody Sunday,\u201d I couldn\u2019t help but think back to March 4, 2007, when Obama spoke from the pulpit of the Brown Chapel A.M.E. church in Selma, the starting point for the \u201cBloody Sunday\u201d march.\u00a0 In that speech, Obama attempted to fashion an imaginary link between himself and the events of March 7, 1965.<\/p>\n He said: “…something happened back here in Selma, Alabama\u2026 \u00a0Something happened when a bunch of women decided they were going to walk instead of ride the bus after a long day of doing somebody else’s laundry, looking after somebody else’s children.\u00a0 When (black) men who had PhDs decided \u2018that’s enough\u2019 and \u2018we\u2019re going to stand up for our dignity,\u2019 that sent a shout across oceans so that my grandfather began to imagine something different for his son.\u00a0 His son, who grew up herding goats in a small village in Africa, could suddenly set his sights a little higher and believe that maybe a black man in this world had a chance\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThis young man named Barack Obama\u2026 came over to this country.\u00a0 He met this woman whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that, (in) the world as it has been, it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child.\u00a0 There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge.\u00a0 So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born.<\/em>\u00a0 So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama.\u00a0 Don’t tell me I\u2019m not coming home to Selma, Alabama.”<\/em><\/p>\n It sounded good; it was great oratory.\u00a0 But what was the truth of the matter?\u00a0 The problem with Obama\u2019s version of history was that he was born on August 4, 1961, while the first of three marches across the Pettus Bridge in Selma didn\u2019t occur until March 7, 1965, three years and seven months <\/em>after<\/em> he was born.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n On March 7, 1965, an estimated 550-600 civil rights marchers, led by John Lewis<\/a> of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (who now represents Georgia\u2019s 5th<\/sup> congressional district in Congress) and the Reverend Hosea Williams<\/a>, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, departed the Brown Chapel in Selma and marched east toward Birmingham.\u00a0 The purpose of the march was to call attention to continued efforts by white Democrats across the South to deny blacks their right to vote under the 15th<\/sup> Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.<\/p>\n The march was well publicized in advance and in the hours preceding the march Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark, a Democrat, ordered all male residents of the county, over the age of twenty-one, to report to the county courthouse to be deputized.<\/p>\n The march was peaceful and well-ordered until the marchers reached the Pettus Bridge, where they were confronted by a phalanx of Alabama state troopers<\/a> and deputized civilians.\u00a0 The marchers were ordered to disband and return to their homes, but when the Reverend Williams attempted to speak to the commander of the state troopers he was told that there was nothing to discuss.\u00a0 It was then that troopers and the members of the sheriff\u2019s posse began shoving the demonstrators backward. \u00a0Many were knocked to the ground, beaten with nightsticks<\/a>, and tear gassed, while a detachment of mounted troopers charged the marchers on horseback.\u00a0 Seventeen were injured seriously enough to require hospitalization.<\/p>\n In his passionate remarks on the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of the march, Obama recounted the progress that\u2019s been made since the civil rights era of the 1950s and \u201860s.\u00a0 He said, \u201cBecause of what (the marchers) did, the doors of opportunity swung open not just for African Americans, but for every American. \u00a0Women marched through those doors. \u00a0Latinos marched through those doors. \u00a0Asian-Americans, gay Americans, and Americans with disabilities came through those doors. \u00a0Their endeavors gave the entire South the chance to rise again, not by reasserting the past, but by transcending the past.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, the South did<\/em> rise again, and as it did, century-old Democratic traditions such as Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the night riders of the Ku Klux Klan came to an abrupt end during the 1950s, in part because of those who marched on \u201cBloody Sunday.\u201d \u00a0But as it joined the 20th<\/sup> century, the South became the most solidly Republican region of the country.\u00a0 Of twenty-six U.S. senators from the thirteen southern states, twenty-two are Republicans and only four are Democrats.<\/p>\n Nor could Obama resist the temptation to play the \u201crace card\u201d once again.\u00a0 He said, \u201cJust this week, I was asked whether I thought the Department of Justice\u2019s Ferguson report shows that, with respect to race, little has changed in this country. \u00a0I understand the question, for the report\u2019s narrative was woefully familiar. \u00a0It evoked the kind of abuse and disregard for citizens that spawned the civil rights movement.\u201d<\/p>\n He went on to say, \u201cOf course, a more common mistake is to suggest that racism is banished, that the work that drew men and women to Selma is complete, and that whatever racial tensions remain are a consequence of those seeking to play the \u2018race card\u2019 for their own purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n It is difficult to understand how a man who can read a teleprompter as skillfully as Obama could possibly have failed to notice that it is he, his wife, his attorney general, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and nearly every member of the \u201cprogressive intelligentsia\u201d who regularly play the \u201crace card\u201d for purposes of propaganda and political advantage.<\/p>\n In spite of the fact that no one in America has access to a wider variety of information than the man who sits in the Oval Office, he seems not to have grasped the fact that Michael Brown was not the victim of racial animus in Ferguson, Missouri.\u00a0 Instead, he was a common street thug who was shot to death while attempting to do serious, if not fatal, harm to a police officer.<\/p>\n Then, with a straight face, he said, \u201cWith effort, we can roll back poverty and the roadblocks to opportunity.\u00a0 Americans don\u2019t accept a free ride for anyone, nor do we believe in equality of outcomes.\u00a0 But we do expect equal opportunity, and if we really mean it, if we\u2019re willing to sacrifice for it, then we can make sure that every child gets an education suitable to this new century\u2026 We can make sure every person willing to work has the dignity of a job, and a fair wage, and a real voice, and sturdier rungs on the ladder into the middle class.\u201d<\/p>\n This in spite of the fact that everything he and congressional Democrats have done since he entered the Oval Office has had the exact opposite effect.\u00a0 It is clear that he is totally ignorant of what it is that causes poverty and who it is that provides economic opportunities.\u00a0 In terms of the educational opportunities necessary for social and economic progress, it is Obama and his Democratic friends who have done everything in their power to destroy the quality of a public education and to eliminate as many opportunities for parental school choice as possible\u2026 leaving private schools and parochial schools to the very wealthy and the politically powerful.<\/p>\n He concluded his remarks with a totally insincere plea for voting rights and the protection of the right to vote\u2026 what he referred to as \u201cthe foundation stone of our democracy.\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cRight now, in 2015, fifty years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote. \u00a0As we speak, more of such laws are being proposed\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cFifty years ago, registering to vote here in Selma and much of the South meant guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar or bubbles on a bar of soap. \u00a0It meant risking your dignity, and sometimes, your life. \u00a0What is our excuse today for not voting? \u00a0How do we so casually discard the right for which so many fought\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, as recently as fifty years ago, millions of blacks risked their lives attempting to exercise their franchise; thousands were shot to death, hung, or burned to death by Democrats hiding behind masks and white sheets.\u00a0 The only efforts at voter oppression we see today are efforts by liberals and Democrats to make voter registration and voting evermore fraud friendly, insuring that every Republican vote is canceled out by at least two Democratic votes\u2026 one legal, the other fraudulent.\u00a0 Nor does it seem wise to increase the percentage of voting age people to enter the voting booths on Election Day.\u00a0 Generally speaking, the American people know less about their government and basic economics than voters in any other nation of the free world.\u00a0 Would any of us want to live in a country in which the number of Obama-style voters was increased by a factor of two or three?\u00a0 Could such a nation actually exist?\u00a0 And if so, for how long?<\/p>\n As one of my black conservative friends, radio talk show host Eddie Huff, quipped in 2007, as Barack Obama became a serious contender for the White House, \u201cWe need to ask some very serious questions of the senator from Illinois.\u00a0 It\u2019s not enough to be black, it\u2019s not enough to be articulate, and it\u2019s not enough to be eloquent and a media darling\u2026 The only question will be how deaf an ear, or how blind an eye, will people turn in order to turn a frog into a prince.\u201d<\/p>\n On March 7, 2015, Barack Obama delivered what may well be remembered as the signature speech of his political career.\u00a0 It\u2019s just too bad it couldn\u2019t have been delivered by a prince\u2026 instead of a toad (er, frog).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rarely do I wait with anticipation to hear what Barack Obama has to say on any subject.\u00a0 After more than six years of his political presence we\u2019ve come to expect that we can place little faith in anything he might … Continue reading