A Different Way to Think

As a black Libertarian I am no stranger to the flawed backwards looking thought process of black people in America.  I have had to debate the merits of forward thinking and big picture thinking and seeing us as Americans and not as a separatist culture of pseudo-Americans.  If you dig deep enough you’ll hit that point at which any black person exposes their own prejudice and racism.  The problem is that they have been raised to think that their separate African America is the better culture and that the rest of the world is racist and only moments from re-instating racism.  All the shortcomings of black people are the result of others.  Anything a white person says that doesn’t agree with black culture is racist, yet black people can’t be racist.  I’m here to introduce a new, truly progressive way to view black people.  We are not the seperate group of people who are special because we look the same.  We are Americans who happen to have brown skin.  Our equality will not come through the actions of others but through our actions.  There is a reason there are some people who are extraordinary and successful, but most black people are not.  Because the successful look to the future and work on securing it instead of living in the past.  But I have strayed beyond the point.  The point is that there are plenty of Shirley Sherrod’s in the real world who are not being taken out of context from a dated speech.  They say the things we thought Sherrod did in today’s world.  Here’s a chat transcript from a friendly debate I had with one.

As a Libertarian I have always sided with immigrants as being people who just want to better themselves and work hard.  Recently I got the following email which gave me a different perspective.  Yes, immigrants are good people who want to better themselves and will work harder for what they want than Americans, but I now see that even so, they are breaking the law in getting here.  Maybe the immigration reform we need is to naturalize the illegals that are here already and then streamline and make easier the process of immigration.  If we make it easier to get here legally than illegally, maybe the process is improved.  An example of this belief is the music industry.  When MP3s first became prevalent the music industry was shocked at music piracy.  Eventually they found creative ways to make it easier and less risky to buy music than it is to steal it.  There are still plenty of pirates, but there are now also people, myself included, who would rather do things legally and take the moral high road.  It is so convenient and affordable to buy digital music legally than it is to risk getting a virus while downloading it for free.  This is how it should be with our southern border.  It should be compelling to want to use legal means to enter the country, versus more convenient to do so illegally.

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President Obama spoke to Louisiana yesterday in an effort to protect his image.  This was a noble idea, even if a little late, but there were a few things that stood out for me during the press conference.  I’ll get to them later, but the main thing that seemed apparent is Obama’s leadership style.  Our president is a thinker who would rather spend precious time studying a disaster before acting, even though he admits the government still might mess up its efforts.  It was also refreshing to see that he now gets that you can’t bash and toy with every big business just for that purpose.  From his campaign you would have thought he would ban BP from the country for their accident, but now that he has time to learn what reality is, he is more cautious about his threats towards BP even in the face of Lousianans who want heads to roll. Read more…

Leonard Pitts Jr. Columnist for the Miami Herald

I woke up today and poured a bowl of cereal and began to read the newspaper as any American might.  I got to the editorial section and saw a story titled “Rand Paul: The same old story from the Miami Herald“.  I read the article and it was clear the writer just doesn’t understand what Libertarian values entail.  As a black Libertarian I felt the desire to respond to the author, one Leonard Pitts Jr with the followi email.  Hopefully there has been some education and progress for another weak minded person who pushes the values that have kept black people from progressing as Americans.

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Our current educational system is another example of why government managed entities don’t fit in with the capitalist nature of America.  Government run and managed programs are run to provide a service and not to make money.  Without a profit motive, motivation to do a better job is limited to whatever is convenient and cheap.  This is why I say privatize schools and provide vouchers for the poor. 

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