LIFE & LIBERTY: THOSE UNDISPUTED CHAMPIONS OF AMERICA
“The education of the nation is paramount, and should not be neglected. We should recognize the absolute necessity of elevating our citizens of whatever class or condition from ignorance, from degradation, from superstition, from pauperism, from crime. It is an accepted axiom, I believe everywhere, that the more intelligent the citizen is the better citizen he is.”
CONGRESSMAN RICHARD CAIN, SOUTH CAROLINA, 1875 AT THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
The Reconstruction Era of 1870 to 1901 was a remarkable time wherein 22 Americans of black skin color , with legislative agendas on increasing education, political rights, and economic independence became Congressmen in our nation’s capital. The mere presence of former slaves in positions of governmental authority represented a tremendous victory for America, as it pertains to its fulfillment of the constitutional ideas of equal justice, life, and liberty for all. Republican idealism on steadfastly continuing the enfranchisement of Americans of black skin color was moving ahead scarcely a generation after the end of the Civil War, with many of these Congressman being former slaves themselves.
Our founding ideas of justice and equal liberty for all is a doctrine that Frederick Douglass used as a religious and political stumbling block to bring about an immediacy to a correct governmental adherence to these ideas. As long as he was alive, a champion for America, Radical Republicanism, as it was called, held itself firmly to an immediacy of liberty-for-all doctrine, wherein America should find itself on the right footing, less it return itself to the tensions found right before the onset of our Civil War in 1861. With tremendous speed, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are entered into the Constitution before the end of the 1860s, abolishing slavery, recognizing citizenship, and finally, voting rights for American males of black skin color.
Ulysses S. Grant, the general President Abraham Lincoln appointed as head of the Union Army during the Civil War, presiding as President from 1869–1877, was no obstacle to the entrance of Americans of African heritage into national government. But the rebuilding of the southern states, governed as military districts by former Union generals during the Reconstruction Era, did not reconstruct the hearts and minds of former, wealthy slave owners, and this meant racial hostility towards any form of integrated community. The union generals who administrated the southern districts had to use military power to enforce the reality of the constitutional amendments, allowing American males of black skin color to be able to vote in political elections. After the death of Frederick Douglass in 1895, no champion was heir apparent to follow-up the unique, smart pressure government needs to maintain the passion for justice and equal liberty required to maintain that racial integration forward thrust. Soon enough, as these southern states began to reenter the union as American states, along with he departure of the Union generals, unconstitutional racial segregation of Americans in the former southern slave states (Jim Crow laws) began to disenfranchise meaningful unification of the American community, causing an exodus movement of former slaves towards the more hospitable northern states.
The dropping of the so-called Radical Republican governmental guard soon followed, and at the onset of the 20th century, coupled with the establishment of the segregation Jim Crow laws, the Federal government becomes pacified in continuing the protection of racial integration, thus allowing the creation of government-sanctioned segregation policies, including the stacking of court-appointed ‘Jim Crow’ judges, the nullifying of equal access to education, and thereby, the replacement of physical slavery with total economic oppression. This created income inequality and overtime, set up the social conditions for wide-spread instituted poverty for Americans of black skin color.
The failure of the federal government to stop the unconstitutionality of the segregation set up the conditions for educational, economic, and psychological oppression of African-American families and individuals. Republican idealism was lost in pursuit of the monetary gains in the industrial era. That lost idealism, centered on a valuing of life, cost the Republican Party a large portion of the African American base. The weightier constitutional matter of the protection of life, liberty and equal justice was given a literal and figurative back seat while the government prioritized making money and building a middle-class of white Americans. Not having an altruistic champion like Frederick Douglass, a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln, meant the end of leadership representation for Americans of black skin color in the U.S. government as the new century began. Presidential administrations and legislative and judicial leadership shifted their focus back onto white America.
Could it be said that the Republican Party was taken over by leadership that did not agree with the ideal of racial integration?
After Democrat Party ideology established the complete societal oppression of Americans of black skin color, and the Republican Party crucially displaced its ‘soul-fire’ for fulfilling our constitutional ideals, Northern Democrats (Franklin D. Roosevelt), swooped in with a welfare strategy that was part of the ‘New Deal,’ effectively recapturing the sentiment of the people they oppressed through disenfranchisement before and after our Civil War. Black America, was largely in poverty. Its initial, post-slavery era societal achievements dashed away, leaving them without champions or the ability to raise them up. After the legal establishment of segregation that effectively scuttled the ability for black America to achieve meaningful educational and economic empowerment, Democrats turn around and offer subsistence living to them. This was the ‘New Deal.’
(Americans of black skin color were cut out of decades of conomic progress, creating educational and economic inequality.)
White America got to enter the middle class, and black America got tenement housing. White America got the best quality education available; black America struggled to barely live. This created a crushing of American Spirit, precisely as the country was beginning to enter the unparalleled era of industrial growth, aviation, and computer technology. The lopsided conditions in American life fomented strife. The split paradigm also was apparent in the Woman’s Suffragist movement of 1848 to 1920. Their top leadership shunned integrating women of black skin color, continuing the racial divide of America and the atrophy of a large portion of the American Spirit. Altogether, the death of a critically thinking champion like Frederick Douglass, the dissipating of Radical Republicanism, the establishment of the ‘Jim Crow’ laws, set up the pacification of a federal government formed for the safety and protection of Americans, turning it into a sponsor of great oppression. Slavery may have ended, but the chains of iron and the whiplash were switched for the social oppression created when we take away the right of quality education and its effect, economic empowerment.
But it did not end there, the hate went one step further and created a system of eugenics (diverse methodology and practices of population control) that squarely targeted Americans of black skin color, and Christianity. At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, a small percentage of Americans were able to amass great wealth. One of these families, the Rockefeller’s, channeled some of its wealth into establishing eugenics as a form of social engineering.
It does well to take a moment here to reflect on how out of tune the sound of the government had become from that spirit of justice and liberty; and of being protected by a benign government for and of the consent of the people. John Adams, his wife, First Lady Abigail Adams, and one of their sons, John Quincy Adams, had in their own ways showed themselves to be exemplary stewards of the founding Spirit that predestinated our fundamental constitutional ideas made into fundamental laws. They all believed in God. John Adams, firstly a farmer, then teacher and lawyer, believed in justice, and as a Christian, his foundational perspective was rooted in the ‘Just One.’ His wise wife, through her continued requests to him that he introduce legal protections for women, but most firmly in her presence as a documented writer of great consequence and influence had a qualifying presence in the gravity of that initial American Spirit. They were not slave owners. Of their many children, John Quincy railed in the halls of Congress against slavery, being a sentinel of light for true justice and liberty. He was vocal also unto the dignity and protection of Native Americans. Unstoppable in his forwardness, a congressional gag rule (1836–1844) was enacted for eight years to stop him and any other Congressman from introducing the matter of slavery as a topic of discussion in the House of Representatives. Adams finally defeated the rule in 1844 with enough votes, and discussion began again on the constitutional legality of the life and liberty of Americans of black skin color.
We have been a slim minority at times, but we have nonetheless endured in our positions of justice and equal liberty for all. We have been Christians, clever as those serpents, yet harmless as doves. We embody that American Spirit with great ardor. And now, we have before us a final battle for life and liberty, that we may have a more perfect American union. This is the battle of the unalienable right to life and liberty. Upholding the rule of law, we fight for the hearts and minds of the nation, that it not give up its power of consent to the judiciary, or the office of the President, nor to the legislative body of our Congress. As it has been clearly seen, these have fallen prey to the want of power and of maintaining power, leaving off their first duty, to protect American liberty.
What began in 1920 with Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood must be brought down to the ground with immediate resolve. Already 61 million unborn children have suffered a holocaust of torturous death that begs one to question if Adolf Hitler’s goal was really defeated?
It does well to take a moment and honestly reflect on why abortion facilities are in low-income neighborhoods predominated by Americans of black skin color, and other ethnicities. Why are they not in affluent neighborhoods with Americans of white skin color? Why did the spokeswoman of abortion proclaim that the negroes had to be exterminated? Our unborn children die torturous deaths. They are dismembered alive, and they are chemically-burned alive.
John Quincy Adams called for the end of the union based on us not living up to its ideal of justice and liberty for all. As it is stated in the ‘History, Art, and Archives: House of Representatives website, Adams “raised the stakes, presenting a petition from 46 citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, calling for disunion because “a vast proportion of their resources” supported institutions that benefited southern slaveholders.”
- Should Christian Americans have to pay taxes to fund the $550 million federal apportion to the abortion industry, when it is against our conscience?
- Would it be right that Jews would have to pay taxes to fund their own Holocaust?
Reverend Doctor King, blew the hinges off the door with peaceful footsteps replete with an American Spirit that had strength to love and to say he loved his enemies. It was Dr. King who called out the American government, both Democrats and Republicans alike, on the oppression of black America. The altruistic soul of the Republicanism that Lincoln encapsulated would not see the light of day until Martin Luther King barnstormed America on a Christian American platform making it all but impossible for any American president to ignore the brilliance of a non-violent uprising of Americans of black (and white) skin color.
As the presidential election of 2020 approaches in November, President Donald Trump has opted to take his campaign platform of promises from the Republican political machine. He has helped stack the courts with conservative judges, and has been able to appoint two Supreme Court Justices. Many Republican congressional leader have also given words about the right to life, and governors across the land are working with their legislatures to enact the Heart Beat Bill legally forbidding abortion once a heart beat can be detected. But the sound of America is not in tune yet. Their is great division and only one pathway to begin consolidating a new union based on our fundamental idea of justice and liberty for all. The problem is that many of us keep looking to government to give us the answers, to do the thinking for us, and to tell us what will be; and that is an educational problem. Because the government is by consent of the people, whereas the people are consenting to the government doing all the thinking and deciding for us. One could say that we have our elected officials who represent us, but then, were was the representation of Americans of black skin color during the time of slavery? They were few and far between. It was John Quincy Adams, perhaps gradualist Henry Clay, and surely Abraham Lincoln. Excepting staunch Adams, if it were not for Frederick Douglass and the uproar of the abolitionist, the question of the life and liberty of American slaves would not have reached its crescendo when it did with the Civil War. Radical Republicanism would not have introduced nearly two dozen congressional leaders of black skin color in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.
The people must be made strong with education. Champions of justice and liberty are essential to the life blood of a healthy American Spirit. Education redistributes the power of influence. Ordinary Americans become empowered to be extraordinary in their actions. Education changes everything. It allowed Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas to reach their heights amidst such oppression. Education stops poverty in its tracks. It introduces critical thinkers and professionals who are better citizens. Education is the fuel for dynamic economic vitality, and redistributes a greater portion of responsibility from government to the citizen. An educated citizenry is an advocating citizenry.
Our national political parties are permeable. They can be infiltrated and are susceptible to the avarice and power-schemes of its handlers. The popular, yet short-sighted economy platform of jobs, jobs, jobs, fails to recognize how our American history has been one where prioritizing economy has not lead to income equality, or exemplary human rights, leading to a better social equilibrium. Only when life and liberty have been valued first has our house been in order, from which point economic empowerment can then take its best root. Plainly spoken, our leaders look to closely to the ‘jobs report’ each month and work out quick-fixes to increase work force productivity without addressing the foundation of our economy, our educational goals and the professional and intellectual quality of citizen that our schools and universities are producing.
Our educational system has to be overhauled to shape a 21st century American citizen that is economically-empowered to be a more powerful citizen. It is this style of dynamic citizen that must be sovereign in its stewardship of the strong minded, yet gentle-hearted American Spirit.
