Yesterday, we asked why the anti-government “Patriot” movement that was so angry about perceived government overreach at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada was all but silent about the arrival of police officers in military grade gear to quell protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
The best explanation, we said, was race: both the Right’s general denial that race plays a role in American life until liberals bring it up, and the sense among some in the anti-government Right that African Americans, even when they are protesting government overreach, are actually tools of the government.
Today, WorldNetDaily columnist Ilana Mercer demonstrated this very point for us in a column in which she says she will not stand with those protesting in Ferguson, even though she agrees with them on many issues, because they are trying to make it about race.
Mercer, who defended Cliven Bundy in his stand-off with the government, writes that she is very angry about “police brutality,” the “militarization of the police force” and the “rise of the warrior cop”; that she supports drug decriminalization; and that she thinks that the shooting of Michael Brown was “an unjustified use of lethal police force.”
But, she says, she won’t ally with anybody who sees these issues as racial issues, such as the “two pimps in a pod” Al Sharpton and President Obama, and she blasts Sen. Rand Paul for acknowledging the role of race in Michael Brown’s death.
Police brutality? Yes! Militarization of the police force? You bet! “A Government of Wolves”? Yes again! “The Rise of the Warrior Cop”? No doubt! But racism? Nonsense on stilts! So why have some libertarians applied this rhetoric to the murder-by-cop of black teenager Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri? The same people who would argue against color-coded hate-crime legislation – and rightly so, for a crime is a crime, no matter the skin pigment of perp or prey – would have you believe that it is possible to differentiate a racist from a non-racist shooting or beating.
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Laws prohibiting the individual from purchasing, selling, ingesting, inhaling and injecting drugs ought to be repudiated and repealed on the grounds that they are wrong, not racist. But statism is not necessarily racism. Drug laws ensnare more blacks, because blacks are more likely to violate them by dealing in drugs or engaging in violence around commerce in drugs, not necessarily because cops are racists.
The following statements are, I believe, not mutually exclusive: Cops deal with the reality of crime. The culture of U.S. cops is that of a craven disregard for American lives.
By all means, argue against laws prohibiting victimless “crimes” on the ground that these disproportionally ensnare blacks. But do not err in accusing all cops of targeting blacks, when the former are entrusted with enforcing the law, and the latter violate the law in disproportion to their numbers in the general population.
The left-liberal trend continued on the libertarian LewRockwell.com, where white sympathy with the police was conflated with racism: “This doesn’t mean that racism is not also involved [in Ferguson]. Polls show that a majority of white Americans are content with the police justification for the killing.”
Could it be that ordinary Americans maligned as racists are honestly waiting for more information, or suffer an authoritarian, submissive mindset; are ignorant about “police state USA,” or have simply experienced “black crime” firsthand, or are fearful of experiencing “black-on-white violence” in all it ferocity?
Clearly, there are many reasons for the acquiescence of whites in what might seem to many of us – myself included – as an unjustified use of lethal police force.
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MSNBC host Al Sharpton is that fellow whose intelligible spoken English is confined to the words “racial discrimination.” The country’s second-leading race agitator has been deputized by its first as liaison to the White House in Ferguson. With his choice of Sharpton as point man on the ground, President Barack Obama, who was to usher in an America in which “ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony,” is stoking more strife.
Like two pimps in a pod, Sharpton and Obama have collaborated to keep racial grievance going.
