American Aparthood - FireDogLake

[WillyT]

American Aparthood
By: Glenn W. Smith
Sunday May 31, 2009 9:30 am

"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear." - Alan Paton


Marchers on the Edmund Pettis Bridge

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Aparthood. It is the American translation of the South African, Afrikaaner apartheid. It is a good word to describe the fundamental mission of the Right: the creation of a minority class of privileged rulers over a politically disenfranchised and economically subjugated majority. Among the tools of aparthood are barriers to voting, destruction of the civil justice and public education systems, and the "legal" theft of the nation's wealth.

The Right has used the election of Barack Obama to once again light the skies with its cross of fire. Suddenly, the terms "states' rights" and "secession" are current. Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Tancredo and others hurling charges of "reverse racism." Somehow, they want us to believe Obama was bused to the White House.

Issues of race are deeply implicated, but the agents of aparthood also exploit a great tension in America's collective psyche. On the one side is the drive to stand apart as sturdy, self-reliant individualists. On the other side lives the love of neighbors, the recognition of our common humanity, the understanding that the self is made whole by relations with others.

This mighty struggle was expressed at the very dawn of European culture's arrival in North America. John Winthrop, in his speech to the colonists aboard the ship Arbella in 1630, urged his followers to understand that "that every man might have need of others, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection." But he also said God ranked us naturally in a hierarchy of rich and poor, noting that acceptance of the divine will guarantees that "the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against and shake off their yoke."

Winthrop helps us see how the contemporary Right reconciles a contradiction alive in its midst. How is it that Creationists can preach the tenets of Social Darwinism? All is resolved through the divine will, they say. A common view of authority and morality unites what seem like contradictory views.

The Right believes humankind is sorted naturally upon a ladder. The Left believes we walk together upon a bridge.

For the Right, freedom means the recognition of a natural, hierarchical order. By "democracy" the Right means a system that makes sure the "poor and despised" do not usurp the power of those above them on the ladder. The Right says it does not seek to "eat up the poor," though the enforced euthanasia of our health care system puts the lie to that claim.

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More: http://firedoglake.com/2009/05/31/american-aparthood/

Excellent!!!

:applause:

[sam sarrha]

1. and the GOP Band plays on...... >Link>> get mad..REAL MAD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBLA7xnsp_o&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=Black+Mountain+Story+&aq=f