By Patrick J. Buchanan
Had Freddie Gray been robbed, beaten and left to die in the streets
of his Baltimore neighborhood, no one would be mourning him today.
No one would be marching for Freddie. No one would be using Freddie as the new poster child of “Black Lives Matter!”
No one would care, three weeks later, but his family and friends.
It was the manner of his death, suffering a fractured spine in police
custody, that makes Freddie matter. For he can now be credibly cast in
the victim’s role in the great new narrative against America — that ours
is a society of unequal justice where racist cops routinely brutalize
black men and boys and are rarely called to account.
In this narrative, the liberal is always the hero.
Hillary Clinton knows the narrative by heart and has rushed forward to cast herself as the champion of black America.
As The Washington Times reports, Hillary declared Wednesday she would help to end a “pattern” of cops killing black men.
“There is something wrong when a third of all black men face the
prospect of prison during their lifetimes. And an estimated 1.5 million
black men are ‘missing’ from their families and communities because of
incarceration and premature death. …
“My heart beaks for these young men and their families. We have to
come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.”
We certainly do, Hillary.
She specifically mentioned Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.
But Trayvon died when he was shot sitting on top of and beating
senseless a neighborhood watch guy, “martial arts style,” and banging
his head on the sidewalk as he screamed for help.
Michael Brown died of gunshot wounds when, after knocking over a
convenience store and throttling the clerk in Ferguson, Missouri, he
tried to wrestle a gun from a cop, and, told to halt, charged the
officer.
This latest great narrative against America — that the men in blue
are a threat to us all, especially black America, rather than the last
line of society’s defense from its criminal class — is but another big
lie, rooted in a tiny truth.
Yes, some black men and boys are killed every year in clashes with
cops. And, yes, blacks are incarcerated in far greater proportions and
suffer, on average, more early deaths. But who is killing them?
When black men and boys are shot to death, overwhelmingly, it is by other black men and boys.
Their premature deaths are due to the violent culture in their own communities, not rampaging white cops.
As for incarcerations, every imprisoned male has confessed to or been
convicted of a crime. And many of the drug charges for which blacks are
in prison were a result of their being allowed to plea bargain to a
lesser offense.
Freddie Gray had a rap sheet of a dozen arrests.
Fifty years ago, Lyndon Johnson declared at Howard University, “We
seek … not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact
and equality as a result.”
In pursuit of equality of result there began one of the most massive
transfers of wealth in all history. Trillions of tax dollars were
plunged into programs of social uplift. The results in black America?
Where the illegitimacy rate was 23 percent in 1965, it is 72 percent
now, and the gap between black and white test scores endures. In the
black community, the dropout rate, crime rate, drug use rate and
incarceration rate are now far higher now than in 1965.
And one notices something else in America. The lawns are being mowed,
potholes filled, ditches dug, fast-food served, dishes washed and
buildings cleaned increasingly by folks who are newcomers. It is they
who are, in Jesse Jackson’s phrase, “movin’ on up.”
Looking back to when LBJ’s Great Society was launched, and the moral,
social and cultural revolution of the 1960s began, what has liberal
ideology done for black America?
Their work ethic has been eviscerated by an endless flow of social
welfare benefits. Those benefits have often removed the incentive to
find or hold a job, and the necessity to have a breadwinner, a father in
the home.
The social and cultural revolution of the 1960s undermined the black churches and depopulated them of their young.
The expulsion of the Bible and of all religious and moral instruction
from public schools left black children defenseless against the lure of
the lifestyles of gang leaders and rap singers.
The conscience- and character-forming institutions that inculcated
the beliefs and values that sustained black families through the
Depression, the war and the 1950s have collapsed.
Result: Many black neighborhoods are unsafe for those who live there.
Hillary’s answer: “It’s time to end the era of incarceration in
America.” But how will returning scores of thousands of convicts to
their home communities make them safer — not to mention ours?
Given how it all worked out, are we really ready for Hillary and another giant leap forward into Great Society liberalism?
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