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Thursday, July 06, 2006
Thomas Sowell :: Townhall.com Columnist
Dems, GOPers, and blacks II
by Thomas Sowell
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Guns are, in a sense, the last line of defense against crime and violence. Moral values stop most people, long before they reach the point where they are about to commit a crime. Yet our public schools have been on a crusade against moral values for decades. Programs undermining moral values used to be called "values clarification" -- until parents began to understand what that really meant. Then the name was changed.

The same approach, however, pervades all sorts of other social engineering programs under different names -- programs claiming to be about "drug prevention" or "decision-making" or some other innocuous-sounding name. The idea is that each child should make up his own morality. A more stupid or more dangerous idea could not have taken root anywhere but in a school of education.

Why does this go on? Because the teachers' unions want it to go on -- and because the Democrats are in no position to challenge the teachers' unions. Republicans don't challenge them as much as they should. But any challenge at all from politicians in office are likely to be Republican challenges.

For the majority of blacks, Democrats have little to offer besides rhetoric on the things that matter most to them -- their children's education, their personal safety and their moral values. In all these key things, Democrats are not part of the solution, but part of the problem.

Republicans have an uphill fight to get their message across to blacks and they have not been doing a particularly good job of it. But they have more to offer than the Democrats, if they can ever manage to articulate better in the future than they have in the past.

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Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
 
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Dems,GOPers, and Blacks-II
Hats Off to Mr.Sowell, there aren't many black men that have the intestinal fortitude, to take Black Americans to task, in public, other than Larry Elder.Once I found out about AM talk radio, it opened my eyes, like I had been blind for 40 years.(Thank you Dennis Prager)
Blacks need to read more, do research, stop listening to music(rap,R&B),and watching TV(silly network sitcoms)so much, stop playing the race card and the victim for everything that happens!!We(Blacks) have been here(U.S.)since the 1620s and all of us weren't slaves, we were Republicans first!!
Blacks better wake up, the illegal/legal immigrants are going to push us back down to the bottom,if we don't align ourselves with folk that want this United States to prosper and keep it safe!!Armageddon is coming..will YOU be ready!!

Also,
"Republicans have an uphill fight to get their message across to blacks and they have not been doing a particularly good job of it. But they have more to offer than the Democrats, if they can ever manage to articulate better in the future than they have in the past. "

Republicans have an uphill fight getting their message across period. Democrats are bereft of ideas (good ones anyway), but can articulate so well that many people don't realize that it's all just talk. Repubicans have good ideas but couldn't articulate them to a retail store manequin. They always seem to strike the wrong chord. Instead of blaming teachers, stick to blaming unions and school boards (these two institutions are where all the power resides and where most significant decisions are made).

This is not to say that individual teachers should not be singled out for derision when they've done something wrong; they should be. But, when Republicans use an individual teacher's wrong doing to tarnish all teachers, well, they strike the wrong chord.

Many of the teachers I know are conservative and yet vote Democrat. Why? They perceive Republicans to be hostile to them and towards their jobs. They vote the way they do out of a sense of self-preservation (Somebody's firing at me; I'm firing right back). Some teachers I know vote Republican but still join the union. Why? Because there won't be any Republicans backing them when some whackadoo parent files a lawsuit because their kid isn't getting enough recess time.

Republicans need to find a way to articulate their message and in a way that doesn't alienate the people to whom they are articulating the message. This is the case whether they are talking to blacks, teachers, Martians, etc.
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