Open Mouth, Insert Foot

So, Cliven Bundy again. I'm not sure if this means he got the media attention he needed and as a result, they caught this faux pas, or the media is glorying in smearing someone again because that's the media's favorite thing to do. I hope you never committed thoughtcrime, or they will come after you if you stick your nose into the public sphere.

Thoughtcrime? It's from 1984. Just what it sounds like, it means you think something out of line.

Anyway, Cliven Bundy made a statement about his opinions on black people today that was rather racist and now all the politicians that supported him are running the opposite direction. Here's the first story I read on the Washington Post that actually quotes him. The article on Politico doesn't even do that.

But since I think a decent amount of it, while rather misled and insensitive, isn't what everyone is making it to be.

As quoted by Truth Revolt:

"Let me tell, talk to you about the Mexicans, and these are just things I know about the negroes. I want to tell you one more thing I know about the negro. When I go, went, go to Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and I would see these little government houses, and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids -- and there's always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch. They didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

"And because they were basically on government subsidy -- so now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never, they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered are they were better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things? Or are they better off under government subsidy?

"You know they didn’t get more freedom, they got less freedom -- they got less family life, and their happiness -- you could see it in their faces -- they wasn't happy sitting on that concrete sidewalk. Down there they was probably growing their turnips -- so that’s all government, that’s not freedom."

Now, while I don't agree with his conclusions (I will not say they were better off slaves. No man should ever be the involuntary slave of another), you can argue that some of what he is saying is just expressing concerns about black Americans and their condition, which, while a generalization, isn't entirely wrong.

However, I think Bundy got his history a little bit wrong. It wasn't freedom from slavery that took their family life and work ethic. They had that after they got freedom. It was a collection of things, and I'm sorry, but I don't have quotes for all of them.

Thomas Sowell muses on many of the issues that face black Americans, and as a libertarian, he often ends up blaming the state. I think it's from reading some of his stuff that I heard some things. He's the one that pointed out that the black family remained strong until around 1960.

A few things had been and were working against them. Margaret Sanger began her plan of eugenics against the unfit. I read somewhere that she walked into the house of a poor person with a lot of kids and concluded the best way to help them was to take away the children aspect. She is the founder of Planned Parenthood.

Laws were passed that didn't make people equal, they promoted one group over another.

An academic argued that a woman didn't really need a man in the house, she just needed his income.

And the welfare state got bloated and mutated, claiming many people of all colors. Really, I primarily blame the welfare state which can make it far more profitable to not work than to work, and has incentives to remain in the welfare state, and went from being a temporary thing with stigma to something that is promoted and people feel is due them. I've read the number of people in poverty is going down, but the number on welfare continues to rise.

Some of this I learned from an article by Dr. Walter Williams. Another lewrockwell.com article on this recent thing with Cliven Bundy quotes Dr. Walter Williams as saying,

“The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery could not have done, the harshest Jim Crow laws and racism could not have done, namely break up the black family.”

And, if we actually allowed to acknowledge there might be a problem, I think that is some of what Cliven Bundy's concerns were about.