On August 28th, 1963, 250,000 Americans travelled to our nation's capital to hear from some of the foremost civil rights leaders from all corners of these United States. Among other speakers, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of the most famous speeches in American history, entitled “I Have a Dream.” In it, King shared his vision that, “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
King’s March on Washington brought about the biggest and most comprehensive piece of civil rights legislation in the history of the United States, and his movement ushered in nothing short of a revolution in the way that most Americans thought about race. King was successful in this endeavor not just because he was well-connected, eloquent, and brilliant, though that certainly did help, he succeeded because he was right. King’s framework for race relations, one in which the importance of arbitrary racial divisions could be cast aside, and individuals would succeed or fail on their own merits, was exactly the solution to the racial divisions America was facing. King was right then, and he is right now.
When I was serving in the U.S. Army as a Frontline Tank Commander, King’s famous quote was real. I could feel it. The color of my skin didn’t matter when other men and women placed their faith in me to keep them alive; my heart did. When I was elected as the first black Republican lawmaker in the state of Arizona, my race didn’t matter to my colleagues; my mind did. Through an embrace of King’s mantra, America has been able to remain the single most diverse and powerful nation in the world. That accomplishment is one that my friends on the left are increasingly taking for granted through their recent embrace of a neo-Marxist, pedagogical framework, known colloquially as Critical Race Theory.
Critical Race Theory, despite what some of its defenders on the left would lead you to believe, is not one thing. It is not a bill in Congress to be voted on, or an organization whose events you can attend; it’s a worldview. It’s a worldview that pits Americans against each other by telling them that they exist inside of a rigid power structure, sorted by race, with black Americans like me at the bottom. Put another way, it is entirely antithetical to the very idea of America, and the exact opposite of what Martin Luther King Jr. believed in. Quite literally, the Democratic Party’s embrace of this toxic ideology poses an existential threat to the continued existence of the American experiment.
Perhaps the most alarming development in this area is the embrace of Critical Race Theory by the Biden administration’s national security leaders, as well as some of the military’s top generals. Implementing this racist ideology in our armed forces would destroy morale and pit our service members against one another instead of against our enemies.
That’s why I’m running for U.S. Congress. I risked life and limb for nearly 22 years in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan to ensure that we could wake up every morning in the freest, safest, most just country in all of human history. There’s not a chance in hell I’m letting socialist progressives take that from any of us. Not without a fight. Part of that fight is holding those accountable who refuse to take a stand against the racist fringe in the Democratic Party. Chief among these do-nothing career politicians is Tom O’Halleran, the Congressman for Arizona’s 1st Congressional District.
Despite being in his third and final term, Tom O’Halleran has done nothing and stands for nothing. Despite initially being elected in Arizona as a Republican, O’Halleran receives a $175,000 salary as a Democrat, and he’s all too happy to sit back and let the radical socialists who run his party push ideas like critical race theory and policies like the Green New deal that would actively harm our nation.
O’Halleran, like too many in American politics today, is content with following the political winds in pursuit of prestige and status. Not me, and not any of the Arizonans I’ve had the privilege of speaking with on the campaign trail. In 2022, and 2024, neither O’Halleran nor I are on the ballot. Our very way of life as we know it is. I know how I’m voting, and I hope you’ll join me.
Walt Blackman is the first African American State Lawmaker in Arizona, as well as a former Front Line Tank Commander with nearly 22 years of service all around the world, including Afghanistan. He is running for Congress in Arizona's 1st Congressional District.
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