Happy MLK Day and other thoughts

By Allen Nitschelm

Someone famous* once said, “you won’t have [me] to kick around anymore.” Yes, I will finally be leaving Acton and Massachusetts for slightly less-green surroundings north of the border. But I will think about the town often and wonder if political balance will ever return to the birthplace of Liberty. I guess there is always hope (but maybe not in my lifetime.)

As Acton seems to be lurching toward denying or rewriting its place in history, and shaming those who used to be proud of the role our citizens played in the birth of America, I have been spending zero time on local politics. But national politics is still of interest, and before I go, I’d like to publish a few articles on the state of the country and where we are heading in the coming years.

Today’s article has been inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we are celebrating on Monday. Dr. King’s most famous proclamation was that he hoped one day that people would be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. How times have changed in Joe Biden’s vision for America. Elections do have consequences and Biden’s handling of race-relations has been particularly poor, which is ironic given the Left’s obsession with the subject. But that may be because those on the Left never want to “solve” race relations, just like they don’t want to “solve” all sorts of problems our country is currently facing. I will let my readers think about why Democrats wouldn’t want to achieve actual racial justice and how their rallying cry about a problem they don’t want to solve would be motivated by politics and the desire for political power.

King’s short-of-hand description about character is really just a placeholder for all sorts of things we should be judging people on. For example, not everyone is going to be a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist. But when society chooses people for these career paths (and many others, of course), the choice should be based on merit, not the color of their skin. If skin color is considered (positively or negatively), it is discrimination and should be rejected out of hand. And that’s because it is unfair. It is a superficial characteristic which is not germane to the skill being sought.

President Biden spoke at MLK’s old church this weekend, and given his repudiation of the teachings of Dr. King, I am surprised it received any press coverage. Oh right, I forgot, the press is on Biden’s side and are going to do anything and everything to make him look good. In his speech, he evidently brought up voting rights as the issue he thinks needs to be improved. Funny, Blacks are voting at record numbers and there is no racial discrimination anymore in government that would prevent people from voting. As Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia has said, his state’s laws updating voting made it easier to vote and harder to cheat. So Biden is just repeating the talking points from Stacey Abrams. But Biden is the consummate partisan politician who has been taking foreign money laundered by his son Hunter, so I personally really don’t care what his handlers tell him to read off his teleprompter. That Biden’s agenda continues despite his obvious corruption is a complete disgrace to our country. If the Democrats believed Trump deserved to be impeached twice, then Biden deserves it 20 fold.

What every child, and every adult, needs in America is equal access. That is the standard MLK sought and that standard should be what we apply today. He was right then and he is right now. And clearly, there is no “systemic racism” in America today. If there were, we would have many thousands of lawyers filing illegal discrimination lawsuits. And, of course, we wouldn’t have so many  minority elected leaders. Biden’s obvious pandering to the Black community is old news by now. But I guess some people still think he and his party are their champions. But again, if that is so, and the Democrats have been in power for several decades, how come this problem hasn’t been solved? The answer seems obvious.

And then the next important question is: what do we do about harm from past discrimination? And the quick answer is that we offer help to make sure that everyone has equal opportunity and access. So this means good schools in poor neighborhoods and giving resources to guarantee equal opportunity no matter where you grow up. After that, individuals are responsible for their own choices and you are on your own. Unless you are a Democrat, and then you believe in perpetual government support, I guess from cradle to grave.

So even though I think Biden is just about the worst President we’ve ever had, and his cognitive functions put America in danger, and his policies have made America weaker and the world less safe, I do want to close this article with some positive things the Biden administration has done. Because despite the President being a total senile fool, he does have aides and allies who carry the ball forward for the Democrats no matter who is in office, and they have not done everything wrong.

So let me say that the Biden administration did a very good job rolling out the vaccines for Covid. I disagree that they pushed strict vaccination mandates whenever they could legally (or illegally) get away with it, based on the efficacy of the vaccine. Had the vaccine been effective in preventing infection or transmitting infection, then mandatory vaccinations might (might) have made more sense. And had exceptions been given for people who had prior immunity (having already caught the disease) or who had religious or health exemptions, then that would have been understandable. But the heavy-handed enforcement which made vaccination a requirement for many jobs, was a terrible policy and a terrible precedent to set. So rolling out the vaccine was great, but forcing people to get the vaccine was not.

Biden did a good job of providing funding to Ukraine. He could have done more, and been a bit faster, but he was properly balancing not getting us into a nuclear war over a country that was once part of the USSR. Of course, Putin likely invaded because he felt extreme weakness and incompetence coming from our Commander-in-Chief, and Biden’s disastrous unilateral pullout from Afghanistan, and allowing that country to completely fall to the Taliban before our troops (and our allies and interpreters) had been given a chance to depart, was a fiasco. If Putin was looking for the right time to go, Biden gave it to him. And this is one reason why everyone is so nervous about Taiwan. Xi can read Biden perhaps better than Putin and only the Ukrainian’s bravery and success on the battlefield, as well as the response from most of the rest of the world to Russia’s immoral invasion, will be giving China some pause.

I disagreed with the Trump policy of pulling out of Afghanistan. We have troops in many countries around the world on a permanent basis, and we don’t call these situations “forever wars.” We should have at least insisted that the terms that were negotiated with the Taliban be strictly adhered to, and the minute the Taliban broke a part of the agreement, all options should have been back on the table. And, of course, we should have kept the airbase until we were good and ready to depart and not a second sooner.

I’ll keep thinking of some Biden successes to balance the next column: what do Biden’s energy policies and border policies have in common?

 *Richard M. Nixon, upon losing his election to JFK.