CommentsONE MAN’S OPINION-Neither political party shows any respect for the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution. Both the GOP and the Dems find money and power in killing off the individual inalienable rights including Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in favor of Group Rights.
The political parties have chosen their battalions to war against each other. The GOP has its White is Right contingent with its KKK, the small “n” nazis, and the White Supremacists. The Dems are gathering in all the groups whom the GOP shuns: Blacks, Mexicans, Gays, and Muslims. The only thing on which the GOP and Dems agree is that Jews are bad. Nancy Pelosi has made the Democratic Party safe for anti-Semites with her own Dog Whistle.
A Dog Whistle is a communication which sends a message that the public believes has one meaning, while in-groups recognize the secret, coded meaning. The right wing uses “globalist” and “internationalist” for Jews. Religious fundamentalists often use “Hollywood” for Jews. On the Left, being “anti-Zionist” is a code word to conceal anti-Semitism. Nancy Pelosi recently capitalized upon another anti-Semitic Dog Whistle, the concept of Equivalency. Equivalency is an anti-Semitic meme which holds that no one may criticize Muslim anti-Semitism without also equating Jewish activities as equivalent with Muslim terrorist attacks on Jews.
Hamas, which is the official government of Gaza, has shelled Israeli settlements thousands of times and has dug tunnels from Gaza beneath nursery schools in Israel, but one is not permitted to condemn Hamas without equating Israeli self-defense with terrorism. Officially, the United States has rejected this false equivalency between terrorism and self-defense. Nancy Pelosi, however, engineered the recent vote in the U.S. House of Representatives which adopted the equivalency doctrine. Rather than condemning the blatant anti-Semitism of Rep. Ilhan Omar, Pelosi not only removed Omar’s name from the resolution, but she turned it into a resolution condemning anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Pelosi’s dog whistle was, “It’s not about her (Omar), it’s about these forms of hatred.” The left-wing anti-Semites heard Pelosi’s Equivalency dog whistle loud and clear while the general public was completely oblivious.
Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi – Twinsies
Both Trump and Pelosi want to hold on to their anti-Semites and both politicos are motivated by the same fear -- unless they send out their dog whistles, their anti-Semites may not vote for them in 2020.
Trump was quick with his Nationalism, America First and MAGA hats. Although most Americans are uneducated in American history, the Group Rights advocates know this stuff. The right wing knows that “Internationalist” means Jew. They know that “America First” is anti-Black and anti-Jewish. Trump deceives millions of Americans into wearing his racist MAGA hats. The vast majority of Americans know nothing about the dog whistle message of a MAGA hat.
For right-wing racists, MAGA means that non-whites have mongrelized America and the nation needs to return to racial purity. To the vast majority of Americans, it is a colorful hat which represents a sense that things are not going well for them. Duh! Things are going badly for everyone except the 1%.
MAGA is Dog Whistle for Group Rights
The notion of Group Rights is great for fundraising and getting out the vote because some other group can always be blamed for all problems. Trump blames Mexicans whom he characterizes as hordes of rapists, drug dealers and murders flooding over our Southern border, while the Dems demonize Whites with particular focus on White males, and among them, the most dangerous are Jews. Pelosi finds common cause with Rev. Louis Farrakhan and his supporters like Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
Brown v Board of Education (1954) - The Worst Supreme Court Decision of the 20th Century
When the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were written, both eschewed Group Rights as a secular evil. Equality, which is a code word for Group Rights, does not appear in the Declaration or in the Constitution. Where the word “equal” appears, it serves to re-enforce the concept of inalienable rights of every individual. During the Lincoln Douglas debates, Sen. Douglas argued that the Declaration only applied to Whites, while Abe Lincoln held true to Jefferson that all individuals had inalienable rights. Slavery was the epitome of Group Rights where one group could own individuals of another group.
After the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, Group Rights took the form of segregation. In the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson 163 U.S. 537, the Supreme Court found no deprivation of the inalienable right of liberty but instead it relied on Group Rights. As long as the two groups were treated equally, they could be divided. Almost sixty years later in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, the U.S. Supreme Court again rejected the argument that segregation was a denial of the inalienable right of Liberty, but rather was unconstitutional only because the separate facilities produced unequal educational results. One hundred and seventy-eight years after the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to acknowledge that Blacks had the inalienable right of Liberty. Instead, the rights of individual Blacks rested on how well they did as a group, i.e. the equality of results.
We need to open our eyes to how the Supreme Court phrased the issue. “Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?”
Like Plessy, Brown v Board of Education refused to acknowledge that Blacks had inalienable right of Liberty. But according Blacks only got Group Rights, Brown provided the legal foundation for Trump’s White Supremacy and for Pelosi’s Identity Politics.
Time to Rewrite Brown v Board of Education
Another sixty years has elapsed since Brown and it is time to re-write the Brown decision: “Because segregation violates the inalienable and constitutional right of liberty, it is per se unconstitutional.”
No individual may be denied his/her inalienable rights on the basis of the person’s group. The state may not tell a White kid that he cannot attend the same school as a Black kid or that a White person may not marry a Black person or that a man may not marry another man any more than it can say that a Catholic may not marry a Hindu.
Group Rights Should Be the Political Third Rail
Trump’s vilification of immigrants should have made him a pariah. The same goes for Nancy Pelosi and her divisive Identity Politics which pits Whites against Blacks, Christians and Muslims against Jews, Straights against Gays, etc.
We the People need to realize that Group Rights eviscerates the essence of what actually makes America great – our recognition that each individual has inalienable rights. As a people, we must judge individuals by their character and not by the color of their skin, religion, or ethnicity.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
