“The Declaration of Independence stresses ‘liberty’ but makes no mention of ‘freedom.’ It could not have used the word Freedom without directly confronting the issue of Slavery as the ultimate denial of liberty. Therefore the word “freedom” was omitted. Thus ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ acquired differing meanings in American political discourse. Liberty meant the privileges to which the elite minority was entitled. Freedom meant the protection of all human beings, including black slaves and Native Americans, from Oppression or Unfair Treatment. President Lincoln eliminated this ambiguity when he reframed the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in his Gettysburg Address. He defined the Union as a nation “Conceived in Liberty,” but “dedicated ….to a new birth of Freedom. This juxtaposition of liberty and freedom gave freedom the dominant place aand placed federal powers above States’ rights. His ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ meant that ‘we the people’ included all citizens including newly freed slaves.”[2] As a consequence, the authentic, un-hijacked, unusurped, black view makes them: “….freedom people rather than liberty people. We gather at the Lincoln Memorial rather than at the Jefferson Memorial. We view conservatives as the heirs of the Confederacy and progressives as the heirs of the Union. We see two Americas – Conservative America and Progressive America. Most of us identify with Progressive America and oppose Conservative America. For us, the states in our nation are symbolically colored Blue for the Union and Gray for the Confederacy. We don’t see any “Red” States, since Red is the symbolic designation for Communism and Socialism. When the delegates to the 1788 Constitutional Convention ratified the Constitution, the dominant centrist faction imposed a compromise document that bridged the gap between those who demanded a Confederacy and those who insisted on a Union. The Preamble to the Constitution proclaimed the goal of “a more perfect union,” but the Articles defined a kind of Union-Confederacy, with the balance tipped slightly toward the Union. The Strong Confederate influence is most obvious in (1) the failure of the Constitution to Abolish Slavery (2) Its definition of a slave as three-fifths of a person in order increase the Congressional representation of the Southern States, and (3) Its guarantee of States’ rights.”….Today this usually dominant centrist tradition is considered to be bipartisan and called Liberal. However a strong majority of Black Americans supports a partisan Progressive agenda a rejects the Liberal Program. Therefore since usually the only electoral choice is between a Liberal and a Conservative, most Black voters consistently vote against the Conservative whose agenda we perceive to be contrary to our vital interests. The only candidates most of us vote for are Progressives. In my view, today’s national divide is the same as it has been since the Founding of our Republic – a conflict between Progressives and Conservatives over Fundamental Values. The middle ground is vanishing , and ‘bipartisanship” is doomed to failure…..our core values are in harmony with the principal Progressive Values but conflict sharply with many Conservative ones. Paul Robeson Jr, A Black Way of Seeing
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 14:22:16 +0000
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