"It's Not Racist to Hate Government"

If you follow liberal and progressive pundits and pols, you've heard the line that being anti-government is inherently racist:
…politically savvy Democrats are never slow to equate advocates of limiting the size, scope, and spending of the federal government with racism, slavery, and white supremacy. Who can blame them, really? Even after the "success" of Obamacare, the president somehow has managed to chalk up his lowest approval ratings ever, and things don't look so good for the Donkey Party in the fall's midterm elections, either.
Salon's Joan Walsh is quick to cry racism in the face of arguments or developments she doesn't like, as are MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Ed Schultz. Jimmy Carter, who himself stooped to race-baiting during his 1970 campaign for governor of Georgia, has chalked up "an overwhelming portion" of negativity toward Barack Obama to the fact that "he is a black man."
In my latest column for The Daily Beast, I argue that progs are wrong when it comes to libertarians and our interest in shrinking the size, scope, and spending of the government.
The fixations of small "l" libertarians include ending the drug war, mandatory minimum sentence and other prison reforms, and pushing a maximalist version of school choice, all of which would directly benefit minorities more than non-minorities. Libertarian public-interest law firms such as the Institute for Justice spend much of their time fighting occupational licensing laws that disproportionately stymie inner-city entrepreneurs who have little to no political or economic capital. IJ's first case, dating back to 1991, attacked Washington, D.C.'s absurd laws against African hair-braiding without expensive and irrelevant cosmetology licenses.
Similarly, there's no way to confuse libertarian obsessions with Fourth Amendment rights, ending stop-and-frisk policies, and reversing "the rise of warrior cops" with anything related to white supremacy. The same goes for the libertarian insistence against an interventionist foreign policy, whether through boots on the ground or via drone strikes and bombing runs. As with any group, there are differences, but libertarians have long been in the forefront of pushing for legalized abortion and gay marriage. (Reason magazine, like the Libertarian Party, was calling for the legalization of same-sex marriage in the early 1970s, when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders still considered homosexuality a form of mental illness that should be "cured.")
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This whole column is racist, straight up.
People who try and deny their racism are obviously racist. Real Non-Racists acknowledge and Check Their Privilege whenever even *thinking* of referring to anything as racist or not, and recuse themselves from the discussion as incapable of determining whether or not anything is racist, because as a member of a non-victim class, its simply not your place to weigh in on this crucial topic which the authors of this piece clearly care nothing about in their glib and superficial treatment...
/ProgDerpWarrior
So, as a brown-skinned, small "l" libertarian, am I a racist or not?
I'm so confused...
It's amazing to me how people who like to portray themselves as intellectuals resort almost exclusively to name-calling. Sure, libertarianism has no nuance, no point, no history, it's just RACIST!
The fact that smear campaigns like this work at all speaks volumes about the state of critical thinking in the world today.
Which is why this country is doomed. The politicians have created an atmosphere of political correctness in order to avoid having a critical debate about their policies. Discussing the plight of blacks in an urban setting racist, suggest school of choice babyeater, discuss the merits of self-ownership war on women, Show how lowering the regurlatory burden helps everyone 1%er . It's all part of the plan.
When our local gay newspaper ran a column about the intersection of drug prohibition and transgendered issues, I submitted a comment that the principle of self-ownership offered the author everything for which she had asked. I'm sure that many readers channeled the goddess through their crystals to smite me, but I prefer to think that I planted a seed in a few readers' minds.
but I prefer to think that I planted a seed in a few readers' minds.
You probably just had one of your chattel slaves plant that seed and sow it. Racist!
I had an interesting conversation with a lady who runs the local Goodwill housing unit and her conservative husband, both strongly Christian. She said something to the effect of, "I'm a standard left liberal and he's a smaller government guy." He chimed in with, "I don't think all drugs should be legal."
I answered, "I used to think that way, but I just don't know if locking people in cages does less harm than the drugs." They both appeared to take that into consideration. So, there's a data point in effective argumentation.
"I used to think that way, but I just don't know if locking people in cages does less harm than the drugs."
This is a bit of a strawman. One can oppose legalisation of all drugs while still not supporting the idea of throwing all crackheads in prison. Misdemeanors instead of felonies, drug counseling, fines instead of imprisonment, etc. are all ways to dissuade hard drug usage without locking people in cages.
And what's backing those nudges? What happens when you skip your court mandated counselling appointment because you don't want to quit smoking cocaine? "If you don't stop using, we're going to lock you in a cage." If we don't completely legalize, eventually the ratchet effect will take place and the press will start selling ads by sensationalizing some drug user who had five misdemeanors who has a car accident while high and kills some photogenic young person. Then the politicians will make hay, and eventually you end up at War on Drugs again.
Well put, Brett.
Yeah, and if those poor victims of drugs and false conciousness re-offend, the gentle benevolent state won't escalate the penalties for non-compliance either. It's not a straw man, it's a fact. Prohibition will always end with cages. It has to, by its nature.
Every law ultimately leads to the jackboot and the cage.
Why does anyone need to ask your permission, or be subject to your "counseling", in order to exercise their right of ownership of their own body?
There are very few people in prison for buying & using drugs. Many, if not most regular users of serious drugs wind up peddling to support their habit. Others wind up committing other crimes to support their habit. Those are the folks in prison.
Of course legalizing does away with the corporate prisons housing huge numbers of small time dealers & lessens the cash needs that motivate many criminals. Law enforcement could focus on the *real* problem cases. The logic is beyond most so-called Law & Order types.
People do sometimes change their minds about these things. It's definitely worth trying.
Actually, the Mother of Everything, of whom the Goddesses are avatars, including Mother Earth, is not only on our side, She is Free Will herself.
http://www.godchannel.com
That is because they are not intellectuals. They are in fact anti intellectual.
What amazes me is how everything Progs say is completely counter to reality. If they claim to be intellectual, the reality is that they are the opposite.
The Prog dishonesty is so complete that it is for lack of a better term demonic.
You been reading Ann Coulter again?
I have never read Ann Coulter outside of what she used to write before the Beltway conservatives at National Review ran her off.
the term I land on is "gnosticism".
Anti-intellectual is right. I started reading Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich the other day. This passage jumps out.
I was "counseled" in middle school for reading that book.
Jesus. I bet that was instructive. I hope you knew enough at that point to tell them to go fuck themselves.
It was a watershed moment in my life. See my copy has a swastika on the cover, so a teacher was "concerned". So the guidance counselor brought me in. I explained that it was a history book, considered to be one of the best on the Nazis ever written. I got a "uh huh" type response, followed by bleating.
Holy shit. It's not like Shirer had anything nice to say about the Nazis.
Oh I doubt any of the adults in that school had ever read it.
Too bad, because it's a heck of a book.
I supposed that was when you learned you were smarter than the average high school teacher.
I was 13, this was middle school.
That book provides some amazing insights into how something like that could happen. The conditions there were just right for the rise of something like Nazism, but there are some disturbing parallels in American politics today. Things aren't bad enough for us to go full Nazi, but I still read Shirer with some distress thinking about today.
I bought but haven't read his book on the collapse of the Third Republic.
At the same time, it is important to look at communism with nuance as a multifaceted movement, despite the far greater damage done.
Funny that. Communism kills a quarter of a billion people in less than a century and according the Progs we need to take a nuanced view and understand its good points.
States rights and small government is used as a justification for Jim Crow and anyone who objects to any government program or regulation is now morally the same as a Jim Crow supporter.
What happened to all this nuance?
No one ever says real Nazism has never been tried.
Progressives (with rare exceptions) aren't interested in intellectually honest debate. Fairly considering viewpoints from outside of the echo chamber is racist.
Which is why it's so pathetic that some people feel compelled to spend so much time and effort kissing their asses and begging them for acceptance.
Race baiting has been honed to an art. There's no easy penetrating that brainwashing with facts and logic any more than undoing the mindset pushed about recreational drug use.
Something about administering medicine to a corpse.
Doesn't matter to the Left. It's not about getting it right. It's about demonizing and agitating their side. Emotions are all that matter.
They know its not racist. But its much easier to make bigots out of your opponents than it is to have a debate on the merits of ideas, which would expose the lunacy of their propositions. Politics at the national has never been about ideas, it's about marketing/branding and how you craft your image and that of your opponent.
*national level
People on the left have no principles. No moral sense of right and wrong beyond government force. Since they have no principles, they truly believe ad hominems to be compelling arguments. Ideas are to be judged no on their own merit, but by the source. Discredit the person and you discredit their ideas.
Climate scientists are really smart, so they are right.
Einstein was really smart and he supported socialism, therefor socialism is right.
Ayn Rand was a terrible person, so all her ideas are wrong.
Libertarians are racists, so all their ideas are wrong.
It's always about the person, not the ideas.
When the religious right and the P.C. left agree, as they so often do, then what they agree on is simultaneously wrong (because people on the religious right believe it) and right (because people on the P.C. left believe it). Instead of trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance, people just tell me what a horrible person I am for pointing it out.
That could be the case - what examples do you have in mind?
The only things I can think of off-hand are violent video games and possibly porn.
Definitely sex workers and bill regarding sex trafficking.
That is a big area of agreement I see a lot on SoCon websites, since they blame porn for most of it.
Was it Tulpa who argued slavery did not exist because of government?
Don't know about Tulpa, but I'm sure Tony's retarded sockpuppet ass has said that.
If he did, he's right -- slavery pre-exists government and appears to have developed concurrent with civilization, though the variant practiced in the American South certainly had heavy government backing.
though the variant practiced in the American South certainly had heavy government backing.
That would be the variant he was excusing government from.
It sprang up organically and without specific govt backing, but its continuation eventually rested on govt recognition of human chattel property rights and enforcement of things like the fugitive slave act, etc.
Correct. First indentured servitude for peasants to pay for their passage across the Atlantic (which would have been the Virginia Company I think?) and then it just turned into lifetime servitude and then became race-based after Africans came west.
Jim Crow was definitely government induced, to the point of forcing private industry- that did not want segregation - to implement it on their property.
The Negro Act, Fugitive Slave Acts, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision, Prigg v Pennsylvania, etc., were all private acts that occurred in the laissez-faire 1700's and 1800's in which private individuals enforced the private institution of slavery.
If it weren't for the government's hands off attitude towards slavery, we would have never had a Civil War.
It's all Frankfort School crap, even though most of the people doing this sort of thing don't know that. It's not lying if it's socially legitimate. Or whatever.
Revolutionary Truth, comrade.
Reality doesn't go away, no matter how much we close our eyes and hope it does. We have to account for human nature in any system--that's something that statists simply refuse to accept. They think they can just beat it out of us.
That's one of the beauties of the Constitution--it was drafted with the assumption that people would try to seize power and otherwise undermine the concept of limited government. It didn't work, in the end, but it did better than most such efforts.
I am always hesitant to claim people are flat out lying. I think this kind of charge rests not so much on lying or even being flat wrong, but only focusing on the partial picture. People who make this argument make it this way: the federal government had to intervene to make some states (who were defending themselves with the rhetoric of property, federalism and limited government) give up slavery; then the federal government set up a massive set of programs to help the newly freed slaves and they were resisted by people who had racist motives but often dressed them up in the language of limited government and federalism; then the federal government receded their efforts and we got Jim Crow; then the civil rights movement saw headway by getting the federal government back into the game and many opponents of that used libertarian rhetoric to oppose some of that; therefore history shows that in the US small government, state's rights movements are intertwined with racism.
It is not that their facts on that are wrong, just that their conclusion is illogical (just because at times calls for limited government have been motivate by dubious motives does not mean that has to be the case) and misses history that cuts against their narrative (state resistance to federal fugitive slave laws for example).
I am always hesitant to claim people are flat out lying.
People who value intentions more than truth are more than happy to use lies to achieve their well intentioned goals.
It really is quite akin to being a rabid fan of a sports team. No, that obvious penalty wasn't obvious at all, because MY TEAM.
It's not all that, but I think that's a big part of the problem with the rank and file. I don't give that much to the leadership, who, while often brainless themselves, also know in many cases that they're full of shit.
That narrative requires a jaundiced and revisionist view of American history which paints the Union as something other than classical liberals (untrue) or the South as a uniquely capitalist region (untrue).
Yes, they are. They are also very selective in their facts, as a full history of federalism in this country would show.
Reconstruction and the modern Civil Rights response by the feds are two of the most taught periods of US history, and those are hard to square with classical liberalism, so I am not surprised they draw that conclusion.
How many people know, for example, that many states granted citizenship to blacks and that that was overturned by the federal SCOTUS in Dredd Scott?
I don't see how. Classical liberalism was and is concerned with liberty for a variety of groups lacking rights, including slaves (shockingly, abolitionism is not a movement started by socialists or social democrats).
Classical liberalism is not an absence of government; it is a conviction about what constitutes appropriate government and protection against enslavement and all that entails certainly falls inside that category.
Reconstruction involved an unprecedented explosion of federal government programs, something hard to reconcile with classical liberalism.
Post-racial America.
Thanks, Obama!
"long been in the forefront of pushing for legalized abortion"
...which disproportionately harms minority babies.
Helping minority mothers?
Only if you assume minority children are a burden. What about abortion helps minority women more than white women?
Is it because minority women are poor? Okay, then I guess poor children are a burden on society and better off not existing.
If abortion is a choice and life doesn't begin until birth, then it is just another medical procedure. If it is just another medical procedure, what is so special about it and why is pushing for its legalization versus say pushing for ending the FDA and making any other medical treatment available so special as to warrant special mention?
The only reason I can see why abortion warrants such special mention is that unlike other procedures it helps poor people by getting rid of the burden of their children, which assumes poor children are a burden.
All children are a burden John, anyone with children knows that. They may be a burden worth having, in fact they may be the kind of burden that really brings happiness and meaning overall (nothing worth doing is not hard is the old adage). But that does not mean that children are not burdens: they are expensive, time consuming critters, and like many burdens the less resources you have the greater the burden is felt.
All taxes are a burden, too.
Theft usually is a burden, yes.
All children are a burden
Not in the aggregate. If they were, it would be in societies best interests that no children ever be born.
Many people of course believe that society would be better if the poor just never had children. And that is of course my point. Such people tend to view providing abortion and eliminating poor children as a societal good.
Did I not write this or did you not read it?
'They may be a burden worth having, in fact they may be the kind of burden that really brings happiness and meaning overall (nothing worth doing is not hard is the old adage). '
If they were, it would be in societies best interests that no children ever be born.
Uh, there are lots of burdens that are necessary and worth doing. Having a job is a burden, keeping your finances in order is a burden, maintaining significant relationships is a burden. I don't think you'd argue that that means doing those things is not in individuals' or society's best interests.
All children are a burden
On net? I doubt it.
Also, if children a burden to the poor, why limit the cutoff on destroying them to 3 months before birth? What logical reason should a poor minority mother be able to legally abort a 3 month old fetus, but not a 3 month old baby?
The simple fact is that the line has always been arbitrary.
Because one is a person and one isn't.
Sure. But if it is not a person, then abortion is just another medical procedure and advocating for its legalization and availability is no more noteworthy than advocating for medical marijuana or any other medical procedure.
What logical reason should a poor minority mother be able to legally abort a fetus half an hour before birth, but not a baby half an hour after birth?
I don't know. You'll have to ask somebody who believes that.
Okay, and?
For the same logical reason that you can't legally extract a heart from an organ donor before half an hour before death, but half an hour after death is fair game.
Because under the law only people have rights. And by law, people only exist from the moment of birth to the moment of death.
I think it is simple, for centuries we have had the common sense notion that what makes a human being a full person has something to do with certain very basic thresholds and criteria. Perhaps no great ultimate line can be drawn to mark that, but most people balk at the idea of a one day old microscopic embryo as a full person just as they do at a brain dead, terminally ill older person being one, though in both cases there is a unique set of human being DNA.
Perhaps no great ultimate line can be drawn to mark that, but most people balk at the idea of a one day old microscopic embryo as a full person just as they do at a brain dead, terminally ill older person being one, though in both cases there is a unique set of human being DNA.
In a holographic universe abortion would be murder as there is no past future and present. An embryo would be child, an adult, an elderly person, and a corpse in a grave all at once.
Of course a holographic universe would also be pre-determined which would mean the murdering abortionists can't really be blamed for killing a person when they have no free will.
Also, if children a burden to the poor, why limit the cutoff on destroying them to 3 months before birth?
Because no one is saying that the fact that children are a burden is by itself a reason why abortion should be allowed.
You need to listen to Planned Parenthood people talking. That seems to be a standard response to why Abortion should be a right.
Didn't Obama say he didn't want his daughters punished with a baby?
Now this is a straw man. The difference between being biologically attached to the mother and being a completely separate person is not arbitary at all.
I am always hesitant to claim people are flat out lying.
Democrats, anyway.
Brooks the Grand Arbiter?
Really, the cries of Racism are just a convenient label to bash the opposition. If they're not calling someone else a Racist, they are saying they hate the poor, or are anti-scientific/anti-intellectual, or are greedy, etc. Motive attribution and questioning has become a core tactic of the Left.
Motive attribution and questioning has become a core tactic of the Left.
Well, yeah. As long as your opponents are defending themselves from personal attacks, you don't have to debate them on any actual ideas.
I love how the left thinks itself scientifically enlightened due solely to climate change and evolutionary theory (vs traditional religious creationist views) yet the Left is also the home to some of the most anti-scientific hysteria including anti-GMO, anti-vaccination, anti-ecigs, etc.
I'm told by proggies that the Non Aggression Principle isn't enough because it doesn't preclude racism, so libertarians can be racists and, therefore, many of them are racists when it comes to anything proposed or accomplished by President Obama. We need to explain that NAP isn't, by itself, the only principle held by today's libertarian movement.
Thick libertarianism! Once you go Thick, you never get sick!
I don't understand when the NAP became a stand-alone feature of libertarianism. It descends naturally from the actual primary tenant of libertarianism: Humans have certain rights which cannot be sold, traded, or taken. The NAP is simply a heuristic for guiding one's own behavior.
Re: creech,
You may want to ask them "Why would you need to make people renounce their racism if they follow the NAP? How could they ever hurt you if they don't?"
The other principle held by libertarians is the Self-ownership Principle but it doesn't preclude a person from being racist, either. A person can be a libertarian and a racist, a chauvinist, a tribalist, a communist, etc. As long as that person acts according to the Non-aggression Principle, he can believe anything he wants, engage in trade with whoever he wishes or keep the company he wishes. Just because a person is racist does not mean that person is ipso facto an aggressor or a violator of someone else's rights.
The proggies are simply engaging in question-begging by conflating freedom with "freedom from discrimination."
"the Non Aggression Principle isn't enough because it doesn't preclude racism"
That is true, but it sure limits what racists can do to the object of their prejudice.
And that is why progs push thought crimes so much these days.
Actual damage from racist actions is minimal these days (Sterling may be guilty of some housing discrimination, but I don't think anybody has said he ran his b-ball team racially, did he?)
I am always hesitant to claim people are flat out lying.
Just an observer.
You know how the song goes, right?
I used to be disgusted
now I try to be amused
It's funny because Brooks immediately thought of and typed one snark about that, and then sat for a few minutes watching CNN doubtlessly, and said 'a ha, here's what I should have written' and then went and did so.
WHat's really funny is how much it obvously bothers you, since you're following him around haranguing him over it.
ARBITER MACHT FREI
Golly bo, I'm sorry if I'm not up to your standards. I'm a poor foil for your monumental intellect.
I'm more fumblefingered than usual, what with tossing off glib snark between sets. Not everybody sits at the computer hiting "refresh" like a monkey whose cranium is wired up like a Christmas tree.
I have more confidence in this report:
So I should go to jail and have my assets confiscated to protest the government redistributing my wealth for political purposes?
Of course you should. After all, taxes are voluntary.
As are muggings. After all, you can choose to get shot and have your money taken from your corpse.
"
ProgressiveCynic 1 hour ago
If I were bothered enough to do it, I could .... find hundreds of examples in the comments section..."
Wait, is that Bo?
"There are MILLIONS of examples here! I do not need to actually *cite* any?!? How dare you expect me to argue against an actual *person* as opposed to my straw-man visions!"
(waves hand vaguely)
Evidence!
Ugh. I need a shower.
There are commies out there, therefore Obama is center-right.
high level derp indeed.
I wonder if part of this is the bubble these kinds of people surround themselves in. If all of your social interactions are will people that range from communist college professor to wealthy gentry liberal, then sure I guess Obama looks center-right.
But if that's the case, it's another datapoint in the building hilarity of how unaware of society these self-prolaimed intellegent and well learned people are.
Enough of this idle chitchat. The Koch brothers don't pay me to sit on my ass all day. I've got crosses to burn and niggers to lynch.
See? What a dead giveaway that is. Help, help, I'm being racepressed!
Re: creech,
You may want to ask them "Why would you need to make people renounce their racism if they follow the NAP? How could they ever hurt you if they don't?"
The other principle held by libertarians is the Self-ownership Principle but it doesn't preclude a person from being racist, either. A person can be a libertarian and a racist, a chauvinist, a tribalist, a communist, etc. As long as that person acts according to the Non-aggression Principle, he can believe anything he wants, engage in trade with whoever he wishes or keep the company he wishes. Just because a person is racist does not mean that person is ipso facto an aggressor or a violator of someone else's rights.
The proggies are simply engaging in question-begging by conflating freedom with "freedom from discrimination."
Re: Bo Cara Esq.,
Mine aren't. Every day I am glad that I have them, they make my life worth living to the end.
All of that is, indeed, possible. Children can be expensive, time-consuming, etc.
Now, how does that justify murdering them, again? I would really like to know.
You actually concede they are a burden when you say 'Children can be expensive, time-consuming, etc.' For you, they are 'a burden worth having, in fact they may be the kind of burden that really brings happiness and meaning overall (nothing worth doing is not hard is the old adage).' That is a good thing.
"Now, how does that justify murdering them, again?"
By itself it probably doesn't, what does is that they are not persons when most abortions are done.
It's not racist, it's morally right.
It may not be racist to hate government, but the right wing sure caters to it and defends it. Nothing like having a black guy in the White House to fire up the malcontents.... Ever see this?:
http://www.chimpout.com/forum/.....2ea4ca.png
or this:
http://www.chimpout.com/forum/.....72591e.png
If you don't get it, then shame on you.
Whoa I've never seen anything like that before?!
http://www.listoid.com/image/1.....13_296.png
I don't get why pictures of the Obamas naked are a big deal. Eveyone is naked under their clothes.
The hyperbole of political, cultish hacks is one reason that I'm a registered Independent. Libertarian ideals work for me better than the crap spewed by the minority of nitwits. Call me what you will, the government is out of hand. Carry on ladies and gents, carry on.
What is the purpose of this article? To preach to the ignorant who might actually believe that hating or criticizing the government might be racist? I on;y ask because it seems rhetorical, and only a complete idiot would think it is racist, and only complete cynics and ideologues would say otherwise.
This article also makes me think Reason is mis-named. Maybe "Stupidity" would be a better name. There seems to be very little intellectual rigor to most of what gets published here.
DRINK! (in honor of Liberation Day in Denmark, drink aquavit instead of crappy tequila)
In the 1940s Orwell pointed out that the word 'fascist' had lost all meaning and just became a tag for a group that the speaker or writer did not like. 'Racist' is the modern equivalent. you just call someone racist because they disagree with you.
It's not *automatically* racist to hate government, though it's pretty stupid. If you want a large, complex society, you need an entity to fulfill certain functions. Privatizing everything & making all participation strictly voluntary, just doesn't work in all cases. I think most libertarians understand this, but they feel the list of functions is much shorter than progressives or most other Americans. A few here seem to think no government is a realistic scenario. They make Marx look like a steely eyed, rock ribbed Master of Pragmatism.
There are a some racists who use libertarian ideals to mask their real goals. Quite honestly, libertarians don't seem overly concerned with the problem.
Case in point: the Carter reference. From 1970??? I think it's safe to say Jimmy Carter has revised his views considerably over the last 44 years. Yet, Gillespie dismisses Cliven Bundy as not representing common views, because he's a "dinosaur"
Newsflash: Bundy attracted scads of much younger supporters, many of whom applauded his suggestion that even slavery would be better for blacks than government dependency. Before you pile on, contemplate the amount of free choice a black person has despite being on welfare, compared to the amount of choice a slave had. Hard to dismiss Bundy if you're a real libertarian.
Nick,
you're fighting a losing battle with those idiot statists.
why even bother?
In all fairness to Carter, he made the comment "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American" back in September 2009 when Obama had only been president about eight months. In that time there was definitely plenty of reason for disapproval and disappointment, but at least in my experience most of the *intensely demonstrated animosity* was coming from the most racist people I knew. Everyone else was just too happy about George Bush being out of office to worry about hating Obama that much.
Since then, however, Obama has given non-racists plenty of reason for intensely demonstrated animosity.