Civil rights are rights protecting social freedom and equality of opportunity under the law. These were the rights that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his civil rights activist counterparts agitated for and exhorted pertinaciously and persistently during the 1950s and 60s. Fifty years later with the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act and the election of a supposedly African American President, the government has done nothing but hinder race relations among various ethnic enclaves and it continues to violate the civil rights of all citizens, which is unequivocally a hindrance to King’s dream and the civil rights legacy.
We live in an age where identity politics is as prevalent as it never was before, causing antagonisms between ethnicities during the Age of Obama. Concomitantly, the property rights of citizens in the free market are violated in the name of equality and entitlement via the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Executive Order 11246 of 1965, which coerced employers to hire based on the “color of one’s skin and not the content of their character” through affirmative action programs. Moreover, an African American president who ironically, laudatorily, and approbatively praised Dr. King, re-signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which initially included a suspension of habeas corpus which would have mandated or stipulated the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial. He also signed Executive Order 13606, which mandates government intervention and usurpation of the private sector namely in industries of civil transportation, energy, farm equipment, fertilizing, food, etc. Hence, this executive order mandates the appropriation of resources of private companies in the name of national defense and security. This aforementioned executive order is fascistic, extortionary, unconstitutional, oppressive and repressive. Ironically, an African American President, who was spuriously and ironically purported to be the “fulfillment of Dr. King’s Dream” by many liberals, passed this act that violates economic freedom and constitutionality.
In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he stated:
“In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’”
It is unequivocal that the centrality of the classical liberal and libertarian paradigms focus on the paramount of citizens having natural and innate rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which encompass property rights. But the paradox of King’s Dream is that Presidents from Lyndon Banes Johnson to President Obama have done nothing but infringe on American citizens’ property rights in the name of equality and the eradication of poverty. Today, Medicare and Medicaid costs $1 trillion annually and as of 2012, the Government appropriated $916 billion of American citizens’ hard-earned income for 100 million Americans who receive aid and this figure excludes the aforementioned programs of Medicare and Medicaid! Additionally, the national debt under President Obama has increased to $20 trillion and counting! The definition of slavery is the restriction of one’s freedom, property and dependence to something or someone. The cardiovascular system of one’s property is one’s labor, and when the government dictates what one is to do with the fruits of their labor, which could be income, wealth, one’s corporation or any remuneration from productivity, then one is in essence a slave which violates the 13th Amendment – the same Amendment that was passed by President Abraham Lincoln who Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. quoted in the famous “I Have a Dream” speech as “The Great Emancipator.”
Segregation was unequivocally immoral and unscrupulous because the government forced businesses to not patronize or solicit services from people based on one’s phenotypical or sociological classification. In this case, the civil rights movement’s focus on freedom, justice and the equality of opportunity to compete in the free market and of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is reasonable and sensible. Contrarily, the government’s attempt to correlate practicality and efficacy only creates unequal results in the name of equality. Equality of opportunity is a tenet of libertarian thought, but whenever the government tries to coerce an equality of outcome, it causes an injustice to the persons whose property rights are violated in the name of affirmative action and the disadvantaged groups who are recipients of these so-called “opportunities.”
For example, at the prestigious University of California-San Diego, only one African American student had a 3.5 GPA or higher after the freshman year of 1997. In state schools of California, the failure rate of African Americans were 15%, compared to 4% of white students and 14% of Native American students. After “Race Blind Admissions” were effective in California, admissions of so-called minority students dropped from 58.6% to 48.7% and the African American, Latino and Native American students attending schools like UC-Riverside, UC San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz enjoyed improved grades, increased graduation rates, and attrition dropped.
In closing, the best trade-off for the fulfillment of King’s Dream is to limit the government and to let citizens pursue the constitutional and classical liberal principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The government’s only job in the fulfillment of King’s legacy is to protect the property rights of all citizens, from domestic criminals, foreign enemies and even itself! Let’s see if this Dream will get fulfilled!
Baruti Libre
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