Note: These are my prepared remarks from my presentation to the 16th annual Clarion Community Martin Luther King Day Celebration, hosted at Clarion University on January 26, 2012.

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One of the more compelling human interest stories of 1975 is the tale of Japanese second lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, an intelligence officer in the Japanese Imperial Army who surrendered to his commanding officer after he was persuaded that the war was over. The only problem is that the war he was fighting, World War II, had ended nearly 30 years earlier. Lt. Onoda had been hiding out in the jungles of the Philippines, destroying crops, engaging in shootouts with the local police and actually killing 30 Filipinos, fighting a war that had ended long ago.

We are now in the second decade of the 21st century and we are commemorating the birth of a man of peace, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Let there be no doubt, however, that he was also a warrior, battling the foes of liberty and equality with weapons of non-violence, grace and dignity. Each time we come together to acknowledge this man’s greatness, however, I think it is instructive to ask ourselves where we are in the ongoing quest to be equal heirs with all Americans in enjoying the blessings of liberty.

As a former intelligence officer myself, I survey the American landscape, past and present, and questions arise in my mind. Are we fighting yesterday’s battles? Is there another front we’re neglecting? Are we fighting with modern weapons and tactics or, to use a popular phrase, are we bringing knives to a gun fight?

These questions came to mind as I read a recent report, The State of the African American Consumer, commissioned by the Nielsen Research Group and the National Newspaper Publishers Association, representing over 200 black community newspaper across the country. According to this report, the black community in the United States will have a cumulative buying power of $1.1 trillion – that’s trillion with a “T” – by 2015, just three years from now. If black Americans were an independent nation, we would be the 16th wealthiest nation in the world, ahead of nations like Switzerland and Saudi Arabia, which we normally think of as wealthy. By way of comparison, the combined buying power of the entire African continent is estimated at $1.7 trillion.

The same report states that the number of black households earning $75,000 or more increased by 64 percent between 2000 and 2009, a rate 12 percent higher than the overall population in that same time frame. Educational attainment at all levels is up, and black women are outpacing black men in obtaining college degrees, so we men have to step it up a bit!

I have a copy of the report for anyone who wants to peruse it, and it’s available online as a free download. I encourage you to read it because it will alter your thinking about the state of black America today. I don’t want to diminish the problems we still face with fatherless homes, unacceptably high dropout rates from high school among young black men, and all the pathologies that result from single-parent households and a lack of education.

What this report did for me, however, is focus my attention on a key question: What are we doing with this considerable buying power, and what should we be doing with it?

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The Old Testament Book of Esther describes a turning point in the story of the Jewish people held in captivity, where Mordecai, Esther’s uncle, challenges Esther, who by this time was chosen as the pagan king’s new queen. If she so chose, she could live a life of indulgence while her people suffered. Mordecai warned her of the gravity of the moment in which she found herself:

Mordecai sent back this reply to Esther:  “Don’t think for a moment that you will escape there in the palace when all other Jews are killed.  If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die.  What’s more, who can say but that you have been elevated to the palace for just such a time as this?”

Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai:  “Go and gather together all the Jews of Susa and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day.  My maids and I will do the same.  And then, though it is against the law, I will go in to see the king.  If I must die, I am willing to die.”  ~ Esther 4:13-16

The question I find I’m asking myself as I watch the GOP candidates for president slog their way across Iowa, New Hampshire and now South Carolina, which holds its primary next Saturday, is “Are either of them elevated for just such a time as this?”

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I was planning to spend the Christmas holidays recuperating from a triceps injury and knee surgery, and enjoying time with family and friends. I wrote what was supposed to be my last column of 2011, and figured I’d re-engage just after New Year’s Day.

Then something so maddening came along that I couldn’t stay silent about it. What it says about liberal condescension toward blacks ought to make us angry, but because we’re fixated on labels rather than truth, not enough will react to make a difference.

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After decades of promoting education as the first and most essential step toward black self-reliance and success in the larger American society, it appears that the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson is changing his tune.

While visiting the Operation Black Vote headquarters in London, England, Rev. Jackson was asked what black fathers should do to protect their sons from the troubles that compel so many young black men to make poor choices leading to crime, violence and untimely death. This is the central point in his response:

When I was younger I would say I wanted my children to get educated so that they wouldn’t have to go through what I’ve gone through. I’ve changed that position now. I want them to get a good education so they can have more tools with which to fight. The fight will not stop. I want them to have more tools. I want black fathers to have more tools with which to fight.

It has been 78 years since black historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson, “the father of black history,” wrote his signature work, The Mis-Education of the Negro, in which he accused the American education system of his day of indoctrinating, rather than teaching, black children, and perpetuating their sense of dependency and inferiority in American society.

Today, Rev. Jackson is suggesting that education is just another tool in the arsenal of grievance, victimhood and protest that he and others of his ilk have employed on behalf of the black community in America for half a century, with decidedly mixed results. I believe, however, that Dr. Woodson would categorically reject Rev. Jackson’s suggested application of education, and accuse him of mis-educating black people in his own right.

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“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” ~ Matthew 25:37-40

Depending on which survey you read, Calvert County, Maryland is either the 13th or the ninth richest county in the United States. Given its proximity to Washington, DC, this isn’t surprising; Forbes Magazine put it best when it said, “Wealth radiates from the Capital.” That publication puts nine of the top 25 wealthiest counties in America either within or just on the outskirts of the DC Metro Area. Newsweek lists seven counties in the region among the top 10 richest in the nation.

It is fitting, in a surreal way, that the nation’s capital, where decisions are made that affect the lives of millions of Americans, knows little of what the rest of the nation is experiencing. This is particularly apparent when you consider that even in wealthy and beautiful Calvert County, where I made my home for ten years, thousands of people are going to bed every night hungry.

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“Not sure why so many people who barely make $50k per year are so rabid in protecting the rich from tax hikes.” ~ Anonymous comment

The battle lines have never been more clearly drawn.

President Obama’s speech in Osawatomie, Kansas was a watershed moment in American politics. The choice of venue, the invocation of progressive Republican president Theodore Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” speech in 1910, and the attention the administration called to the speech prior to its delivery was a clarion call as significant as President Ronald Reagan’s declaration at his 1981 inaugural address:

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.

Just as President Reagan in 1981 signaled a return to America’s founding principles of individual liberty, self-governance, free markets only lightly regulated for worker protection and public safety, and a government tightly bound by the restraints of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, President Obama’s speech was a dramatic call to reject those traditions in favor of a political ideology not of American origin, but which has taken root in soil fertilized by fear and watered by covetousness, envy and entitlement.

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I had the pleasure this past week of sponsoring Tim Goeglein, former special assistant to the president during the Bush Administration, and currently the vice president of external relations with Focus on the Family, during his visit to Liberty University to promote his memoir, The Man in the Middle: An Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era.

Tim is a friend as well as a fellow author, and he is a living example of God’s grace who inspires me with his candor, humility and a countenance of joy whenever I see him. The most powerful political leader in the world showed him mercy at a time in his life when he will tell you he deserved scorn and disgrace, and the experience made him an even more powerful witness for Christ. God is always made strong in our weakness, and while the world, and many Christians for that matter, do not grasp that fundamental aspect of God’s character, it is essential to living the contented life he promises, with a peace that passes all understanding.

I tell you all this not to pitch Tim’s book, although you should buy it — I’ve read the excerpted first chapter, and I will buy it when money is less tight — but to touch upon a couple of points he made during his presentation to 92 students, faculty and visitors at the Helms School of Government, and a comment he made to me later over dinner.

He laid down a couple of statistics that I found staggering. The first is that, in absolute numerical terms, there are more Americans out of work than at any time in our nation’s history, even more than were unemployed during the Great Depression. The second sobering statistic is that two-thirds of the unemployed have been out of work for a year or longer. Tim’s recitation hit me where I live because, until I was hired into my current position this past August, I was in that number.

At a Hanukkah Dinner later that evening, hosted by the campus’s Stand with Israel club, I shared with Tim my own story of failure, repentance, redemption and grace related to my recent experiences with unemployment and underemployment. He said to me, “You need to tell that story.”

I’ve been pretty transparent about my job struggles of the past five years, and I’ve reflected in numerous articles and my book the trials and despair I experienced, and the lessons I learned as a result. Tim is right, though – I need to tell the story again, in one place, and pray that God can use my words to bring hope or peace to the tens of millions who are still out of work or who, like me, are underemployed, making much less than they did before, but still blessed to have work.
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A recent opinion piece in the New York Times revealed that Democratic Party strategists have effectively written off the white working class vote, 43% to 48% of the overall electorate. With that revelation, we have come full circle on a presidency built on a lie, one that was perpetrated on the American people the night of July 27, 2004 at the Fleet Center in Boston, Massachusetts. Here’s how it went down: Read the rest of this entry »

Note: This is the fourth of a series, “Brainwashed, Incurious, Hard-Hearted or Bamboozled?” The previous installments can be found here.

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I have often recounted that my conversion to conservatism began in my late teens, after I left home and began to examine what I believed and how that compared and contrasted with the platforms of the predominant American political parties.

I concluded that the values instilled in me by my parents, who were and are lifelong and loyal Democrats, were more representative of the Republican Party than the Democrats. My parents responded to my question about this dichotomy with the statement, “Republicans hate black people,” a statement at odds with history, my own personal experiences and even my parents’ history since they grew up in a South that was Democrat and hostile to black freedoms and aspiration.

I decided I couldn’t compromise my integrity in that manner, and reached my own conclusions. I’ve learned and experienced so much more since then, but nothing has caused me to deviate from my decision to live out my values in every area of my life, including the political arena.

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Another week, another celebrity leveling criticism at the Tea Party movement for its alleged racism. This time, however, the statement raised my ire enough to elicit a retort. To quote Joseph N. Welch, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

The celebrity is Sean Penn, who is well known for his admiration of South American dictator Hugo Chavez and his hatred of the nation which brought him fame and wealth, which tells me all I need to know about his discernment and judgment. The statement, however, was outrageous even for him:

If you ask a representative of the Tea Party, ‘OK Social Security, socialist. Get rid of it?’ They’re going to get very confused,” he said. “At the end of the day, there’s a big bubble coming out of their heads saying, you know, can we just lynch him?

Ignore for a moment the condescension in his assumption that we can’t cogently argue the issue of Social Security without becoming confused. In fact, I’m confident we can discuss the issue with more knowledge and alacrity than he can – see my previous comments regarding his discernment and judgment.

The accusation, however, that Tea Party members harbor a secret desire to lynch President Obama, or anyone for that matter, is beyond the pale.

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