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ArchivesPosted on 01/31/2003 12:16:25 PM PST by kimimac
From The Washington Dispatch
Opinion The Silent Voice of the African American Conservative Exclusive commentary by Kimberly McKinley
Jan 31, 2003
I am a thirty-two year old, middle class, African-American female. Why is the assumption that I should be a card carrying, Bill Clinton voting democrat? I registered as a republican in 1990 and since then I have voted for George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole and George W. Bush. My role models include Condoleeza Rice, J.C. Watts, Clarence Thomas, and Colin Powell. I listen daily to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and I want Armstrong Williams and Walter Williams to have daily radio shows. I believe in results oriented education, lower taxes and a strong national defense.
I am sure I am not alone in my conservative beliefs, but sometimes the liberal media makes me feel that I am. I have spent the last twelve years hiding my conservative views from liberal whites and blacks, mostly because they feel that I am selling out my race. Liberals like Joe Lieberman feel that I should be thankful to the democrats for all they have done for me; affirmative action, welfare, “the right to choose”, and higher taxes. Gee, thanks. I wonder how I am selling out my race. I believe that if our schools were held to a higher standard all children would have the scores and grades to compete equally for an Ivy league education or a job on Wall Street. I don’t see Welfare helping any of our nation’s disadvantaged by making them dependent on government handouts. I believe in the right for the innocent to live and for the guilty to die. I don’t believe that the producers of this nation should unconditionally support the non-producers. I think we deserve more.
African Americans do not fit into one liberal democratic mold. We are like all other Americans with diverse beliefs, goals and aspirations. Unfortunately and possibly for nefarious reasons the democrats and the media push individuals like Jackson and Sharpton, and their liberal rantings, as the only role models for African-Americans. It is time for African-Americans to demand that all of our voices are heard. We should no longer allow the assumption to exist that an entire group of people think, believe and vote as a group. It is time for our voices to be heard.
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Kimberly McKinley is a married mother of a one-year old daughter. She lives and works in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. To contact Kimberly, send your comments to kimamckinley@aol.com.
© 2002 The Washington Dispatch. All Rights Reserved.
Oh.... and
Question: Why is it that, despite the attempted brainwashing by the left, you were able to rise above the rhetoric and see the light, whereas somewhere between 90 and 95% of African Americans pull the lever next to the letter "D?"
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townhall.com
Thomas Sowell
January 31, 2003
A cold shower
Sometimes a phrase betrays a whole mindset. Someone quoted in the New York Times recently referred to the Bush tax cut as one in which "most of the benefits would be showered on the richest taxpayers." Keeping money that you yourself earned is called having benefits "showered" on you! By this reasoning, anyone who has the power to take something from you and doesn't take it all is "showering" benefits on you. Anyone who has a gun and doesn't use it to kill you is showering life itself on you.
Big spenders and big taxers never want to face the fact that wealth is not created by government, but by the people that the government taxes. Moreover, these are seldom simply people who "happen to have money."
Most people who have money usually got it by providing other people with something they wanted badly enough to pay for it. This is never called "public service" by the politically correct. Selling people what they want, in order to get what you want, is called "greed."
It's public service when you decide what other people "really" need and impose it at the taxpayers' expense. It's public service when you create hoops for other people to jump through -- rules to follow, forms to fill out, lives to be lived as you prescribe -- all for their own good.
Given this mindset, you can see why letting people keep more of the money they earned is considered to be indulging them with benefits that the government "showers" on them. It is like subsidizing sin.
Anyone who has read "The Federalist Papers" -- or who has read between the lines in the Constitution -- knows that the people who founded this country had a great fear of government's power over individuals. They knew that there are always busybodies who cannot be happy unless they are telling other people what to do and forcing them to do it.
Property rights were put into the Constitution to keep politicians on a short leash, instead of letting them roam at will over the land and treat the wealth created by others as something for them to dispense as largess and use to buy votes.
People had the right to bear arms, so that they could defend themselves, instead of letting their safety and the safety of their families be yet another playground for bright ideas about crime and criminals, such as unsubstantiated theories about "root causes" and pious hopes about "rehabilitation" of criminals and "prevention" of crime.
It is not just a question about the rightness or wrongness of particular notions in isolation, but the unending proliferation of these notions. Every little wonderful bright idea has its rationale. It will make us safer, or smarter, or more sensitive. Above all, it will make us more like the anointed who have thought up these grandiose ideas.
If they think it is more important to look out for caribou than to look out for people, then you must be a slob if you think people are more important than caribou.
When you add up all the requirements, restrictions, re-education, and re-diculous ideas dreamed by all the 57 varieties of busybodies, you end up hemmed in like a rat backed into a corner.
Literally from the moment you wake up in the morning and take a shower (with a government-prescribed rate of water flow) to the time you flush the toilet (also with a government-prescribed water flow rate) for the last time before going to bed, your life has been laid out for you.
Incidentally, the government also subsidizes water for farmers from federal irrigation projects, so that farms end up wasting far more water growing things like rice in the California desert, when the same rice can be grown in parts of the country where ample water is provided free of charge from the clouds.
But consistency is not the bottom line. The bottom line is having you and the farmers both being directed by the anointed.
To people with this mindset, the government all but owns us.
It is no more than a logical corollary that they own our money. Therefore it is just an irresponsible indulgence when tax cuts "shower" us with the money we earned.
©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
townhall.com
I question myself sometimes on why my favorite writers are Walter Williams, Larry Elder, Thomas Sowell. Coincidence?
I'm white, Southern, raised knowing all the "colored jokes" and saying the n-work more than I would like to admit. It WAS the culture in Alabama. That's not me or most of Alabama, anymore.
I don't consciously try to prefer the black, conservative writers, but I always look first to their columns.
God Bless you and yours!
We need more like this lady to stand up and challenge those who are still enslaved to the RAT party. Hint: they don't WANT you to be free. You are much too useful to them.
Amen to that; and I would add, some of the most important for the future of America.
Mine, too! Like TJ, I would have added Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder...*and* Ward Connerly!
I listen daily to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and I want Armstrong Williams and Walter Williams to have daily radio shows.
Dr. Williams for 3 hours a day every day! Amen!
I believe in results oriented education, lower taxes and a strong national defense.
Me, too! Tax cuts for tax payers! School choice for school-goers! God bless our military and our Commander in Chief!
I very much enjoyed reading your article and the responses on this thread. Welcome to FR, and thanks.
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