Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll shouts: I DIDN’T DO IT! She writes:

When our Citizen of the World President attended a Pan-American Tinhorn Dictator’s Conference in 2009 (I may not have the name completely right), Obama sat and listened to Daniel Ortega give a 50-minute diatribe about the century of sins of the United States. At the end of that tedious hour, Obama never offered a single rebuttal. Later, he made an idiotic exculpatory remark about — wait for it — HIMSELF.

After being all huggy with Comrade Chavez, Obama ate up Ortega’s swill with a spoon, taking notes. At least he refrained from bowing. Anyway, he found nothing to disagree with in the general indictment of the nation that elected him President. He did make sure in subsequent interviews that the late and unlamented Hugo Chavez and President Ortega knew that he was “grateful he didn’t blame ME for things that happened when I was only 3 months old.”

Now either Obama’s math or his history is off a smidgen here. Neither is a strong suit for him. He was referring to the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion which occurred in April of 1961 (under the direction of Democrat icon, JFK) and he wasn’t born until August of that year. No matter. His point stands. Let us stipulate: Anything bad that happened to people in Latin America before Obama was born, he didn’t do it.

Likewise, Goose, meet Gander. How liberating to be pronounced blameless for things that happened before I was born! Black slavery was one of the most despicable crimes against humanity in world history. Lincoln said, “If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is.” Anyone who denies this truly is a hopeless racist and should contemplate how it would feel to be owned as chattel. But slavery the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery. Anyone under 150 years old today didn’t do it. Obama said so.

Of course, even of the many people who happen to be over 150 today, only a tiny minority owned slaves, including those born in the South. So most of us simply didn’t do it

I have never felt the slightest guilt for my white skin or its putative privilege. My ancestors on my Mother’s side had the great privilege of being near-penniless farmers in the Dakota Territories. South Dakota didn’t even become a state until 1889. Daddy’s people were small businessmen (funeral home, cafe) and slightly more prosperous Dutch farmers. Also in slave-free South Dakota. They had the true and wondrous privilege of living in the land of liberty and opportunity and in just a couple of generations of long-term marriage, backbreaking work, and serving in the military, clawed their way permanently into the middle class.

Now, I’m no economist, nor do I play one on TV, but I have never been able to figure out how slavery was an economic benefit for either white farmers with small farms or laborers of any color, in the south or the north. Wouldn’t free labor drive down the market value of all labor? Who can demand decent wages if there is a group forced to provide compulsory free labor? Wouldn’t economy of scale of the big plantations be as unfair to the small farms as the much-maligned “Agribusiness” is supposed to be today to family farmers?

Further, whatever economic benefit slavery provided for the country as a whole from 1619 to 1865 or so, why wouldn’t that benefit accrue to all Americans today, including African-Americans? If the economy produced so much wealth from slavery to eventually be able to pay hundreds of NBA players tens of thousands of dollars per game, and millions for shoe contracts, then didn’t that long-ago slave economy at least lift all boats, albeit not equally?

Misery in the black community today is the result of 3 things: crime/drugs, lack of jobs and the ability and willingness to do them, and lack of fathers in the home, stemming from a pathological irresponsibility on the part of millions of black men who impregnate multiple women and abandon both them and their children. If all alleged or even real prejudice on the part of white people vanished overnight, not one thing would change in the black community. No, not one. You can’t fix what you didn’t do.

Seventy-five to 80 percent illegitimacy in the black community? I “never had sex” with those single ladies, no matter what the definition of “is” is. I didn’t do it. My sperm count is pathetically low, even if some days I decide I am a guy in order to avoid the long lines in the women’s bathroom.

Streets ravaged by drugs, gang fights and drivebys? I don’t buy, sell, or use drugs. And never have. Not even in Amsterdam where it was legal; not even when cocaine was all around me in the comedy profession in the ’80s. The only gang I was in – until they turned into bazoony leftist celebrity hounds – was the AARP. I didn’t do it.

Wretched graduation rates for black youth, especially males? I didn’t do it. The black Honduran foster son we took care of for four years got his diploma in spite of pressure from his black friends to fail. Thanks to saintly teachers (all white), student tutors (all white) and parental love, guidance and supervision.

So now that we have noticed that our fellow Americans come in a variety of colors, can we not cease and desist with the finger-pointing, the accusations of privilege, and just get on with the tedious and difficult business of the content of our character and taking responsibility for our own lives? If not, then we should definitely rescind the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday as a government holiday, because that – and non-violence – was what he was all about.