SAT SEP 27, 2014 AT 07:00 PM PDT JFK schools Dick Cheney on civil rights and American global leadership byJon Perr 5 Comments / 5 New youtube/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7BEhKgoA86U Former Vice President Dick Cheney is outraged—outraged!—that Barack Obama felt compelled to mention the national shame of Ferguson, Missouri, during the presidents powerful address to the United Nations. Accusing Obama of comparing the killing of Michael Brown to the butchery of ISIS, Cheney declared, I am stunned. But he shouldnt have been. Most presidents have long understood that American credibility and leadership around the world require linking progress on civil rights at home to the emancipation of all people. To put it another way, victory in twilight struggles against threats past and present to the global order like the Islamic State and the Soviet Union demands the United States hold both the commanding heights and the moral high ground. Even as the Cold War nearly turned hot, President John F. Kennedy never stopped stressing that principle. Two years after the construction of the Berlin Wall and just 9 months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK made that very linkage in his nationally televised address on civil rights. In announcing his decision to force the desegregation of the University of Alabama, Kennedy explained: We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. But thats not all he said. In the worldwide confrontation without Soviet communism, Kennedy warned his listeners in the U.S. and around the world, Americas call for the freedom of all nations would fail unless the same promise was realized at home: Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free...We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home; but are we to say to the world, and, much more importantly, for each other, that this is a land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettos, no master race, except with respect to Negroes? Please read below the fold for more on this story. PERMALINK 5 COMMENTS / 5 NEW Continue Reading
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 02:43:46 +0000
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