Will black voters be powder keg?

This is the last week in October, and as I write it is only one week until we elect a new President of the United States of America.

And ... the rhetoric is being ramped up!

Will black voters be powder keg?

The Obama campaign is accusing Republicans of trying to disenfranchise black voters in Detroit and other cities by using home foreclosure lists to turn them away from polls on Election Day.

The charges were initially raised by Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters of the Congressional Black Caucus, prompting Obama and the Democratic National Committee to sue the Michigan GOP.

The federal suit, which campaign lawyers acknowledge is based solely on unconfirmed reports and rumors, also alleges that Ohio Republicans and the Republican National Committee also have schemed to challenge voters who have lost their homes in the battleground state.

Republican officials in both states denied the allegations.

"We're not going to do that," said Michigan Republican Party spokesman Bill Nowling, "and we never talked about doing that."
...

Senior NAACP official Hilary Shelton said blacks would get angry if they felt disenfranchised because of voting irregularities.

"On Election Day," she said, "you may have some tempers flare."

While Shelton said police should prepare to control crowds, she warned against too big a police presence near polls, which she said could intimidate first-time minority voters.

Note that last sentence.

The police are warned to "control crowds", and in the same breath "warned against too big a police presence near polls".

It's a tightrope, and nobody will know which side the police will fall off until after the election.

But fall off they will ... unless O wins the election. That's all we hear in the news nowadays; a threat of violence if the democrats don't win the Presidency.

That's Coercion.

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In the meantime, we have just learned of a 2001 interview in which O called for "Redistribution of Wealth":

But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.

That's Utopianism.



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This country was conceived and dedicated in a Frontier Society, where each man was expected to be responsible for himself and for his family.

Less than 50 years ago the Democratic Party still seemed to believe in those values.
What ever happened to those words once uttered by (Democratic) president John F. Kennedy in his Inaugural Address (January 20, 1961)

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Has the democratic Party lost its way in the last 47 years? What has happened to Vision, to Leadership?

Or has it merely replace this out-dated policy with ... something else?

Here is a phrase you might bear in mind:
"Coercive Utopianism"

A translation would be extensive and Geek-Length. Let me just say that when I was in Army Basic Training we had a big hulking Training NCO ("Drill Sergeant") whose mantra was "You do what I say you do! Then we'll get along just fine."

That may be oversimplified, but it certainly describes the flavor.
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In passing, and apropos of nothing at all, really, allow me to recommend some light reading:

"A State of Disobedience", by Tom Kratman

I just completed re-reading this book today.

This is where I first saw the phrase "Coercive Utopianism".

It wasn't used to describe a Change We Can Believe In.
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UPDATE: 29-OCT-2008
Bill Whipple at Eject!Eject!Eject! has a much more rigorous 'fisking' of the 2001 Obama radio interview. I consider this a worthwhile read.

Note that at the Whipple website a commenter links to an "Obama Timeline". On the surface, this to provide damning evidence that, for example: O is not a natural-born American citizen; the man identified as his father is not in fact his father; O was brought up a Socialist by his associations with radical socialists; and there has been a conspiracy by the O campaign to obscure, obfuscate and obliterate information which would clearly make him an illegitimate or inappropriate candidate for the presidency. My own evaluation of the article is that the provided references are based on secondary and even tertiary sources, some of which don't actually refer to the points made in the text of the Obama Timeline. I don't recommend it as a legitimate sourse, I only mention it to illustrate that it is very difficult to learn the facts based on Internet sources which are often, in the final analysis, inadequately documented.

Also, here is an unedited uncut version of the O radio interview.