Dictators, Si – Republicans, No!

Atlantic journalist and blogger Jeffrey Goldberg is trying to understand why blacks are such “very forgiving people.”

Why does he think they are?

Well, how could any black American be, or even think about being, a Republican when, according to Goldberg, Republican “party officials…. venerate the Confederacy.”

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg (seated left) enjoys the Havana Aquarium with Fidel Castro and Che’s daughter (behind Goldberg, with blondish hair)

Translation: When it’s clear, at least to Goldberg, that the Republican Party is a party of racists, how can they get, or expect to get, black votes?

Goldberg presented this ponderous dilemma to Mississippi Governor, and chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association, Haley Barbour.

Barbour explained that Confederate Memorial Day in his state is a statutory precedent long preceding his tenure as Governor and the state legislature in Mississippi is, and always has been, controlled by Democrats.

In other words, Mr. Goldberg, feel free to try and understand why Southerners choose to remember the Confederacy. But appreciate that this has nothing to do with partisan politics. Southern states that celebrate Confederate Memorial Day have had Democrat as well as Republican governors and two of them today, North Carolina and Tennessee, have Democrat governors.

Perhaps Barbour’s heavily Southern drawled English was hard for a Northeastern liberal to understand. Or, perhaps more likely, he didn’t want to understand because he didn’t hear what he wanted to hear.

Goldberg, in his blog, dismissed Barbour’s answer as “endless noise, signifying nothing.”

Thirty two black Republicans ran in primaries this year. Fourteen are now running for House seats and the prospects are excellent that there will be the largest number of black Republicans serving together next year in the House since seven served during Reconstruction. Several with excellent prospects are running in Southern states that celebrate Confederate Memorial Day.

Liberals can’t seem to grasp that black Americans are waking up to the fact that the welfare state plantation is not in the interest of black or white Americans. And that, regarding the unique problems that many blacks face, the best approach is an agenda of freedom, of limited government, of traditional values, of personal responsibility.

Perverse liberal logic seems to be that if you don’t advocate government dependence, you must be a racist. And if you are black and see things this way, you probably need therapy.

Of course American history has sin. The personal history of every individual American has sin.

The point is to recognize what is right, to fix what is broken, and move on.

But Goldberg refuses to get it. He blogs, “I’m so interested in this issue, I’m going to pursue it…..”

A few weeks ago, Goldberg made news getting invited by Fidel Castro to visit Cuba to spend a couple days chatting it up with him.

Reading through Goldberg’s blogs about his visit, he appears infinitely more tolerant and forgiving toward one of the most ruthless Communist dictators of the last century than he is toward Republican Governor Haley Barbour.

In response to criticism that he sat for three days serving up soft balls to Castro, never once asking him about oppression or the hundreds of political prisoners tortured and rotting in Cuban jails, Goldberg writes that Castro isn’t as bad as many claim. “Cuba,” he writes, “is not as bad Zimbabwe, Burma, Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Eritrea, Venezuela….”

Freedom House, which provides annual ratings of political rights and civil liberties in 194 nations around the world, ranks Cuba among the worst. From Goldberg’s list, Iran and Venezuela are actually ranked more free than Cuba.

Regarding racial matters, which supposedly Goldberg cares about, Freedom House reports “Afro-Cubans have frequently complained about widespread discrimination against them by government and law enforcement officials….”

And Dr. Oscar Biscet, a Cuban black Christian physician, sits with a 25 year sentence in prison for protesting human rights abuses and one of the most liberal abortion regimes in the world where, according to National Right to Life, six of ten Cuban pregnancies end in abortion.

Goldberg’s priorities and perspectives appear a little out of whack. But, if he was a clear thinker, he wouldn’t be a liberal.