- The nation was shocked, shocked to learn that the Rev.
Jesse Jackson, speaking at Michigan State University last week, doesn't
like the Founding Fathers of the American Republic, thinks they were racists
and sexists, and believes that democracy in America dates only from the
enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. So what else is new?
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- The rhetorical stones Mr. Jackson pitched into the pond
have stirred a few ripples among conservative sages and pundits, but there's
little reason for them to be surprised. Not only has Mr. Jackson himself
a long history of spouting such remarks but also this is precisely what
we should by now have come to expect from American black leadership. What
we are seeing is the genesis and elaboration of a racial consciousness
in place of a national consciousness.
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- As for Mr. Jackson, back in the 1980s he was leading
demonstrations at Stanford University demanding that "Western Civilization"
has got to go," meaning that the university should drop its required
course on the history of Western civilization and teach instead the kind
of multiculturalist racial and political dogmatism that Mr. Jackson favors.
What he said at Michigan State last week is merely the corollary to what
he was telling us then.
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- What he said at Michigan State, to be specific, is that
"democracy as we know it did not begin in Philadelphia, where a bunch
of white men wrote the laws." "These men's wives were not allowed
[to vote], these laws were made at a time when only white men had the right
to vote," and "true democracy" began only with the passage
of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Mr. Jackson also had some generally illiterate
things to say about recent U.S. foreign policy as well, but ignore that
for the nonce and attend to the good reverend's vast display of his own
historical ignorance.
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- In the first place, the Founders did not claim to be
founding "democracy"; they were quite explicit that they were
"republicans" (with a small "R") and that the Constitution
they drafted and adopted contained a democratic along with monarchic and
aristocratic elements. If you had accused them of setting up a "true
democracy," most would have recoiled in horror at the thought of it.
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- In the second place, it's quite true for the most part
that "only white men had the right to vote." In fact, for the
most part, only white, fairly affluent, Christian men had the right to
vote, but note that Mr. Jackson doesn't seem to care so much about the
property and religious qualifications. He's really obsessed with racial
qualifications, though he tossed a bone to feminists for good measure.
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- Are we supposed to be ashamed of or feel guilty about
the fact that the white, male Founding Fathers didn't let blacks and women
vote? You bet your knee breeches we are, and with a good many white males
today, Mr. Jackson's guilt trip works well. Many do feel guilty about it.
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- But it's very arguable that the "true democracy"
favored by that Mr. Jackson and most of the guilt-ridden white men who
swallow what he tells them is not all it's cracked up to be. The country
was far better governed in the days when the franchise was seriously restricted.
For all Mr. Jackson's contempt for the generation of George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and a dozen other immortals of political
thought and practice, "true democracy" has produced nothing whatever
like them in its entire history.
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- But Mr. Jackson's real message, of course, was to tell
us, as he and his fellow pioneers in racial consciousness have told us
before, that the Old Republic created by the Founding Fathers is finished,
and it's finished for essentially racial reasons.
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- "We [meaning the United States] represent 6 percent
of the world," he intoned. "Most people on this globe are yellow,
black, or brown, non-Christian, female, young, poor and don't speak English."
Because the white-male-dominated republic of the Founders is a small minority
of "this globe," Mr. Jackson seems to infer that it's about to
vanish down history's drainpipes.
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- It may well disappear, and the rising racial consciousness
among the "yellow, black, or brown" peoples of which Mr. Jackson
boasted will be one major reason for it. But the truth is that the white,
male republic of the Founders was an even smaller part of this globe when
it was established 200 years ago, and that didn't stop it from getting
started and prevailing against all sorts of odds. Back then, you see, white
males believed in what they were doing and had the wit and will to do it.
Today they don't, which is why they pay any attention at all to gentlemen
like the Rev. Jackson.
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- Samuel Francis is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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