The most dangerous term likely to come out of President Joe Biden’s lips during his address to a largely empty congressional chamber is “institutional racism,” and it isn’t even close.
No matter what massive spending policy prescriptions that are laid forward or draconian regulatory attacks are promised, the idea that the very foundation of our nation is illegitimate undermines the essence of America.
Those who espouse the notion of “institutional racism” dismiss the quest for religious liberty which drove a small band of Europeans across the Atlantic to the shores of Massachusetts in December of 1620. In a world where everything that came from Europe is bad, the Pilgrims are cancelled along with the quaint idea of sharing one’s bounty with others who don’t look like you.
“Institutional racism” negates the very DNA of America found in the powerful words of revolution penned by Thomas Jefferson and ratified by 56 brave Americans,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The philosophy underlying the “institutional racism” claim is that all fruit from the poisoned tree of slavery is by definition illegitimate and evil. Wittingly or not, when the president uses the term “institutional racism” as he did as early as June of 2020, he is joining an attack on the moral good that America has been to the world for the almost 245 years of existence.
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By rejecting the fundamental truth found in these fifty-five words, President Biden is denying foundational principles that “all men are created equal” which some cringe at due to its cultural exclusion of women, but those same people ignore the obvious that the term “all men” crosses racial boundaries in its affirmation that God created each of us equal in His sight and endowed each of us with rights.
And this is what the left truly wants to destroy, the idea that individual rights come from God and not from government.
In fact, the very next line which is often ignored declares that governments are formed to protect these God-given rights and are legitimized by the consent of the governed.
It is probable that President Biden has not thought through the meaning of his declaration that America is “institutionally evil” and its ramifications, but the Communist Chinese government in legion with the professional statue and property destroyers across America have.
When the Chinese ambassador dressed down U. S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken in Anchorage, Alaska last month attacking the legitimacy of the United States as a world leader by referencing Black Lives Matter and inferring the “institutional racism” roots of our existence he could have been reading from a Kamala Harris speech. That would explain Blinken’s flaccid response.
It is impossible to reconcile the claim that America is inherently evil, or at best no better than anywhere else, with the reality that large swaths of people from all over the world dream of coming to America. In fact,Gallup CEO Jim Clifton reported that 42 million adults from Latin America and the Caribbean alone would immediately and permanently emigrate to America if they could. That’s just under ten percent of the entire population of the region.
In spite of these attacks on the essence of American greatness, America remains a shining beacon of freedom for the rest of the world. It is time that our own elected leaders realize it.
Rick Manning is President of Americans for Limited Government.
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