Summit on Peace Street

We journeyed to Raleigh to show the President hear how we feel about his vision of government and the need to go “all in” on healthcare. It was a great crew. Mom of eight accompanied us and she is amazing. The QVs have our hands full with three. Mom of eight makes it look easy….and she and her family were the talk of Peace Street. Eric unsheathed our most powerful weapon in this battle, and led us all in the rosary. This was a particularly powerful repellent for Planned Parenthood sign wavers who packed up and sought more secular shelter. Other protesters and concerned citizens joined us in prayer. It was quite a sight as we all took it to the streets of Raleigh. We are front and center proudly waving our signs. The post here describes events well.

The whole exercise was reasonably peaceful. There was a little yelling, but no physical altercations. There were at least 500 citizens on the corners of Peace and St. Mary’s. Numbers in opposition to the President’s policies and proposals were easily 3:1. Opponents were vocal but all activities were G rated and there were no threats or personal attacks targeting our President. I did not hear one person opposed to the President's policies state, "Not my President." This likely seemed pretty tame to our moveon.org friends who are used to conducting business a little differently.

The good news and bad news is that while there were lots of citizens opposed to the President’s proposal, this was a grass roots activity with poor organization. The Wake County Republican Party and NC branch of Americans for Prosperity had sponsored a healthcare event pre-rally and attempted some organization but it was invisible at Broughton High School. We were initially directed, as the post describes, to a location which never saw Obama. We all noticed the lower level of security in this staging area, the lack of news crews and pressed on to an area the GOP had explicitly advised those opposing the President’s policies to steer clear from. The note from Wake County Republican Party stated, “We have been asked to NOT have people congregate at the corner of Peace and St Mary's as the moveon.org people will be occupying that space.” Hundreds of us ignored this request. St. Mary’s and Peace was where we needed to be.

We greeted the President as loudly as we could as he whizzed past. He then went into the school and, from all accounts, wowed enthralled “townhallers” pitching softballs with his well worn diatribes against the “naysayers” and “chatterers” unable to appreciate the need to hand healthcare over to a government that lists the impending failure of the postal service as its achievement for the week.

Interestingly, after the President’s motorcade passed, the local ABC affiliate stood on the corner of Peace and St. Mary’s with Obama supporters tight and bunched up, yelling and screaming. He then began filming. No doubt the evening news will be filled with shots of the “throngs” of Obama supporters out to greet the President. A few of us crossed the street after the President had passed to inject some reality into the news broadcast being fabricated by the TV crew. Some of us engaged the President’s supporters in animated and ultimately thoughtful discourse.

Once the shouting stopped, we talked race, we talked racism on the part of the President, we talked religion and faith, we talked abortion, and we talked about the current healthcare legislation. We talked about the implicit and explicit racism of current government policies. We talked about the comments of Justice Ginsburg in which she stated that she always assumed the Roe decision would lead to public funding of abortions to decrease “population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” We also talked real possibilities for building on the best healthcare system in the world and assuring care for the 10-15 million who desperately need a safety net. Our dialogue ranged from eliminating state insurance mandates, to delinking health care from employment, to tax credits for insurance purchase, to malpractice and tort reform, and then to a discussion on the wisdom of guaranteeing that illegal immigrants be guaranteed a government healthcare benefit.

It was a bit heated at times and while the police allowed us to continue the discussion they were standing by. One African American Obama supporter got an answer he didn’t seem to expect when he stated, “You have to know this is a white man’s world. Black people have had to struggle for everything and now we have to fight for healthcare.” The response…pretty close though probably some paraphrasing, “You know why that is? It’s because the African Americans of this country have for 60 years been willing to be the victim of liberal politicians and Great Society mad scientists. They have devised a government run social support system that promises blacks everything…healthcare, homes, income and food…and yet ultimately has delivered nothing but decimation of the black family, destruction of a sense of individual responsibility, destruction of black neighborhoods and livelihoods, and absolute dependence on the government. Blacks continue to vote for politicians who promise the moon and deliver only more dependence. Government dependence is a drug worse than crack. You may have broken out of your shackles 150 years ago, but you are still on the plantation. And if you give this government absolute control over your health, you will never escape.” Not sure of what the response to this would be, the speaker braced. The Peace Streeter considered this and said. “You make some good points brother.”

I’m not sure any of us changed anyone’s minds today. It was an open and brutally honest exchange, however. I certainly doubt the President was influenced by the crowds you will not see on the evening news tonight. The folks we interacted with on Peace St and St. Mary’s were willing to listen, as were we. Our new friends on Peace Street made it crystal clear that there is deep frustration within the African American community. There was a knee jerk reaction of our colleagues on Peace Street to blame this frustration on the failure of “government” to help black people. We argued that this frustration is a result of failed government policies which have decimated the African American community. In the end the Peace Streeters did not disagree.

Ultimately this frustration can be channeled in one of two ways. As the President has done, it can be channeled to develop support for more government intervention in all our lives. The President has made a life of exacerbating racial tensions and class warfare in pursuing his objective of an increasingly powerful centralized state which subjugates the needs of the individual to the needs of the state. He called his grandmother a “typical white woman”, he would sit in the pew of Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, he portrayed Midwestern voters as bitter and clinging to their guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them and he described the textbook performance of a model white policeman as “acting stupidly”, fueling unsupportable charges of racial profiling as he prefaces his comments with the admission that he did not know all the details of the case.

Alternatively, if race baiters like the President, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the rest would stand down and allow individuals like those of us talking on the corner of Peace Street and St. Mary’s today, we might channel this frustration in more constructive directions. One of the corner delegates said, “All we want is the American dream man. Not sure we will ever get it.” With a black community committed to supporting “leaders” and politicians whose survival requires that African Americans believe they are perpetual victims, while they peddle more government dependence and the lure of guaranteed outcomes, I sadly had to agree.

Our friends on Peace Street have been promised much, little of which has been delivered over the decades. Another community, the Hispanic community, is now marching down the same road. They also have lots of checks in the mail. They have taken their number as the next minority group to be consigned to the ash heap of terminal liberal victimhood as politicians say anything to gain their support.

Would that politicians would commit themselves to strengthening the America which has been the incubator for the “dream”, an America which fosters individual growth, liberty, independence, self-reliance and reverence for our divine origin, not the reflexive expectation that it is government that can and must provide. It takes a village? The village is government. Government, for many of us, exists to support the freedoms which build self-reliance, faithful individuals and strong families. Such a “dream” includes not only the enormous possibility of success, but the risk for failure. A nation which supports a government which guarantees mediocre outcomes determined and measured by prejudiced bureaucrats is not free. This is not an incubator for the American dream my Peace Street friend is after. This was one thing we all agreed on at the corner of Peace Street and St. Mary’s today.

Despite a provocative discussion, a sobering comment was made by one of the delegates as we packed up to head home. After admitting that the black community at this point has to bear some responsibility in who leads it, a remark was made, "Well, we do have a black President. Doubtful many civil rights warriors thought that would happen in their lifetimes." The response from the African American Peace Streeter was laughter followed by "The President ain't black. He's half white."

Back to square one.

Is it really possible to reverse the course of victimhood set over the past sixty years?

Quaere Verum