By Dennis Prager
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
Here is a contemporary political truth: Every time you
think that the left and its political party have hit moral bottom, they will
eventually prove you wrong.
The most recent example occurred last week in Louisiana.
The head of the Louisiana Democratic Party, State Senator Karen Carter
Peterson, D-New Orleans, stood before her colleagues in the state Senate and
announced the reason people oppose Obamacare.
"You ready?" she asked three times.
It is President Obama's color.
"It isn't about the administration, and it should
not be about the administration of the state nor federal level when it comes to
Obamacare," she said. "But in fact it is. And why is that? I have
talked to so many members in the House and Senate and you know what it comes
down to? Are you ready for this? It is not about how many federal dollars we
can receive. You ready? You want to know what it's about? It's about race. Now
nobody wants to talk about that. It's about the race of this African-American
president. ... It comes down to the race of the president of the U.S. which
causes people to disconnect and step away from the substance of the bill."
Now why would the head of a state Democratic Party -- and
a state senator -- say something that is equally vile and moronic?
There are two possible explanations, and one is worse
than the other.
One is that Peterson doesn't believe what she said; that
she said it solely in order to intimidate opponents of Obamacare. When a
prominent black accuses anyone -- even if it is most white people in America --
of racism, it usually ends all debate.
This would, of course, reflect poorly on Peterson's
character, but it would actually be the more positive of the two possible
explanations. Because the other possible explanation is that she really
believes what she said. And if she really believes that the more than one
hundred million Americans who oppose Obamacare -- a CNN poll last week found
that 54 percent of Americans oppose Obamacare -- do so because Obama is black, America
is in trouble.
America is in real trouble if Peterson represents a large
majority of black Americans. And we have every reason to believe that she does.
She represents a 48-percent black district. And virtually every black leader
routinely charges whites with racism.
We simply need to be honest. Either the great majority of
American whites are racist -- indeed profoundly racist if they oppose Obamacare
solely because the president is black -- or the great majority of blacks
wrongly perceive reality when it comes to their perceptions of whites. In
either case, blacks and whites are living in parallel universes. And one of
them is both factually and morally very wrong.
In my view, the idea that whites that oppose Obamacare do
so because the president is black is one of those terrible lies that shape a
society for ill.
But this is not only a commentary on present-day black
America. It is even more so a commentary on the left. Blacks have memories of
genuine oppression that have left deep psychological scars. While we wish that
reality would trump psychology here, we can understand -- though not agree with
-- black anger at white America.
But the non-black left -- which routinely accuses whites
who oppose the president of racism -- has no such excuse. Paul Krugman of the
New York Times, Chris Matthews of MSNBC, former president Jimmy Carter, Frank
Rich of New York Magazine, and so many others on the left have no psychological
excuse for saying white opposition to Obama is racist. Their charge is just malicious.
This is just one more example of the societal destruction
wrought by the left. Ironically, in this instance its primary victims are ...
blacks.
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