Our Nation’s We Shall Overcome Ethos was Sabotaged

A fatalist believes that when your number is up, it’s up and it does not matter what you do.  Other people believe their own actions determine outcomes; hence the motto: “Better safe than sorry.”  Statistically, a fatalist soldier has a greater   likelihood of being shot on the battlefield but also a greater chance of a Purple Heart. 

Many people see bad events such as poverty and discrimination as the grounds for grievance politics which should be called “Blame Them” politics. Others such as Martin Luther King, Thomas Jefferson before him and Black Lives Matter after he respond to bad events by working on cooperative politics to bring people together to collectively solve problems.  At the time of his assassination, MLK was focusing more on poverty. It was not Black poverty or White poverty, but poverty itself which we needed to overcome.  “We shall overcome” was not a concept limited to Black civil rights. 

Our nation’s We Shall Overcome ethos was sabotaged.  There was no logical necessity for the cooperative politics of Martin Luther King to die.  However, cooperation was being stalked by a vicious predator – the grievance politics of Group Rights. It took decades for Group Rights grievance politics to bring us to the violent attempt to overthrow the United States government on January 6, 2021. 

Right now, there is little reason to believe that a bloody, civil war will not resume.  We are locking our minds into certain thought patterns which will intensify group divisions, reduce cooperation and result in more violence. 

Group Rights Means Blame The Other 

If Group Rights meant that one was proud of his own religion, ethnic or other group and worked hard to improve his life and the lives of others, then Group Right would not be a formula for a national disintegration.  Group Rights, however, are based on dichotomous thinking of Us v Them, The Good v The Evil, The Saved vs the Damned.  Some external group is seen as the fountain of all evil and one must banish the evil others.  This type of thinking is deeply ingrained into the Western psyche.  It forms the basis of Christianity, Nazism, Communism, and now American political life. 

Few noticed the harmful mental turn the nation took during the 1950's when it dropped E Pluribus Unum as its motto and adopted “In GOD we Trust” and added “under GOD” to the pledge of allegiance.  E Pluribus Unum recognized that each person had a unique background, but together we all cooperate “to form a more perfect Union.”  In that joint goal was the understanding that we had a long way to go, but at least we were on the right path. The adding of “GOD” not only was a 100% contrary to the US Constitution, but it encapsulated the Us v Them mentality. During the 1950's, Christians saw America as in a life and death struggle against the godless Communists.  Thus, Christians thought it was necessary to add GOD on our money. Think about that – “GOD” was added to our money!   

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) likewise turned the nation towards Group Rights thinking by denying Blacks the individual inalienable right to Liberty.  Instead of following Thomas Jefferson’s lead in the Declaration of Independence to include Blacks among persons who had inalienable right of Liberty, the Supreme Court only recognized a spurious right of equality of outcome – which was neither an inalienable right nor a constitutional right.  The Brown Court affirmed Plessy v Ferguson’s view, (1896) 163 U.S. 537, that Blacks (Negroes) did not have the inalienable right of Liberty. Rather Separate But Equal was unconstitutional only to the extent that outcomes for groups of Blacks were not as favorable as the outcome for groups of Whites.   They placed the constitutionality of Separate But Equal on sociological studies showing that Black students in non-integrated settings did worse than Whites.  “Segregation of White and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children.” Brown at 494 

Brown v Bd of Education maybe the most racist post-Civil War decision.  The constitutional issue and answer were simple. “Did separation of races infringe on the right to liberty? Yes. Segregation is an unmitigable violation of everyone’s Liberty.” Following in the racist footsteps of Stephen Douglas,  The Brown Court does not acknowledge that Blacks have inalienable rights.  

Once one goes down the equality path, then a Black person’s rights rest on how well his group fares. Life becomes a sociological nightmare, where Blacks document some group-wide grievances.  While the Brown court prattles about deleterious mental effects on Blacks children who are not allowed to sit next Whites, it never mentions the ill effects on White children who are not allowed to sit next to Blacks.  Its de jure ruling that segregation was not a deprivation of the basic American value of Liberty enshrined in American thought a deeply racist attitude towards Blacks as inherently inferior and hence not entitled to the inalienable right of Liberty.  Lay people do not realize that courts can make law by what they do not say.  This issue may be foreign to today’s readers, but judges in the 1950's knew about the Lincoln Douglas Debates with Douglas’ racist position that inalienable rights did not apply to Blacks. Today, we notice if a Black movie director does not get an Oscar nomination, but we do not notice that the US Supreme Court does not recognize he has an inalienable right to Liberty. 

Had Brown been based on a deprivation of individual liberty, there would have been no Group Rights.  In our current anti-White orgy to blame White people for all the world’s woes, we ignore the fact that when our national motto was still E Pluribus Unum, even die in the wool racists believed in individual inalienable rights. They had no acceptable basis for discrimination on the basis of race. Once Group Rights became central to our national consciousness, then the racists felt legitimatized.  “Why should I lose my job to a less qualified Black when my family arrived in the 1910's?” 

Now the nation is polarized on the basis of grievances. Many Blacks blame Whites and many Whites blamed Blacks and racial relations at the lower sociological-economic levels have turned to an endless series Us v Them battles. 

Group Rights Mean $$$ 

Politicos love Group Rights because they can always raise money by pointing to the evil ones who need to be defeated.  In response to Brown and the subsequent Group Rights, White Christians were convinced that they were the victims of discrimination.  What started as the Silent Majority has ended up with Trumpists, the Evangelicals and QAnon.  

Gleefully, the Dems fashioned the D-word to correspond with the N-word for Blacks.  Dems sum up GOP White America as Deplorables.  Can anyone imagine JFK’s giving a campaign speech where he called White people “Deplorables”? When a nation divides into Us v Them, the politicos raise gazillions of dollars because hate is more profitable than cooperation.  

In contrast, Joe Biden is steadfastly leading us towards cooperation, but neither the Dem nor the GOP party is following him.  We the People must support Joe Biden and shun own political party when it does not see each person’s individual inalienable rights. 

(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.)

-cw