St. Louis CofCC Blog

We’re quickly approaching the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Augusta Chronicle recalls that he was in Augusta in late March of 1968, right before he went to Memphis.  We find out this revelation from one of King’s local proteges:

Dr. King’s death also stopped him from carrying through on a plan that would have charted a new and highly controversial course for the civil rights movement, according to Mr. Watkins. In his book, he wrote that Dr. King shared his frustrations about the economic inequities blacks faced in America over dinner at a hotel after his speech. He then whispered to Mr. Watkins what he hoped to eventually do, something the former Augustan decided not to put in his book.

But after 40 years of secrecy, and initially saying he would probably take it to his grave, he revealed what it was: Dr. King was going to propose a separate state for blacks so they could eventually achieve economic parity that he believed wouldn’t happen on its own in America.

It’s surprising, but not shocking.  After making a career and a reputation out of lobbying white governments and people to embrace diversity, equality, integration and civil rights, his ultimate goal was black separatism.  Of course, it wouldn’t have been a genuinely separate state.  As we found out in the September 2006 issue of American Renaissance:

It is not just individuals who may not be black enough. The same standards apply in larger contexts. Most whites do not realize that many blacks have given up on integration. Blacks are incensed if they are kept out of white institutions or neighborhoods, but many view integration only as a tool for specific purposes and not as an end itself. If they can reach economic or political goals through exclusively black means, that is preferable.

Roy Brooks, who teaches at the University of San Diego Law School, makes this case in Integration or Separation? which was published by Harvard University Press. “There is nothing intrinsically good about racial mixing,” he writes. “Its appeal comes from its social utility.” He continues: “African Americans need to spend less time trying to live next to whites and employ more energy striving to live together.” One reason for this is that “[c]learly the homogeneous community rather than the larger white society is the environment in which the personal self-esteem of African Americans develops positively.” In his view, integration is an endlessly wearying struggle for blacks because they must deal with whites who can never be made to understand black reality: “[M]any African American students believe it is futile to attempt to educate white people, and they do not see the races ever living together in harmony.”

He proposes what he calls “limited separation.” Blacks must always have the right to live in the white man’s world if they want, but they should have their own schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, churches, and amusements, so that they can live completely apart from whites if that is their choice. Working-class blacks, he explains, will almost certainly choose separation.

Thanks to this revelation, we now know that Martin Luther King was an advocate of “limited separation.”  In other words, they want what white people have, and want to be able to integrate with white society, and make it illegal for whites to have anything on their own and for themselves alone, but they want to be able to have their own legal enclaves as an option.  Of course, white governments would have to pay for these “separate states,” (especially their health, welfare and education), and would be responsible for these states’ predictable failures, though the blacks that govern them would get to take credit for the fleeting successes.

PJB:

On reading George Bush’s discourse to the New York Economic Club last week, Cicero’s insight came to mind: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”

With Iraq entering its sixth year, the dollar sinking to peso levels, the economy careening into recession, and 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens roosting here, Bush alerted us to what really worries him:

“I’m troubled by isolationism and protectionism … (and) another ‘ism,’ and that’s nativism. And that’s what happened throughout our history. And probably the most grim reminder of what can happen to America during periods of isolationism and protectionism is what happened in the late — in the ’30s, when we had this America First policy and Smoot-Hawley. And look where it got us.”

(snip)

In smearing as nativists, protectionists and isolationists those who wish to stop the invasion, halt the export of factories and jobs to Asia, and stop the unnecessary wars, Bush is attacking the last true conservatives in his party.

Which is understandable. For after the judges and tax cuts, what is there about Bush that is conservative? His foreign policy is Wilsonian. His trade policy is pure FDR. His spending is LBJ all the way. His amnesty for illegals is Teddy Kennedy’s policy.

Two-thirds of the nation says we are on the wrong course. Two-thirds rejects NAFTA and amnesty. Two-thirds wants out of Iraq. Two-thirds rejects Bush. Bush says that people are being misled by those wicked old isolationists, protectionists and nativists. At least he and Poppy will have something to agree on in retirement.

I would like to know which “isolationists, protectionists and nativists” President Bush is worried about.  Does he mean the three remaining major Presidential candidates to replace him, the ones that are for free trade, open borders, and foreign military interventionism, in spite of the pretenses on the part of two of them?  Does he mean the current Democrat-run House and Senate, the one that has jacked tariff rates way up, funded the border fence, and defunded the American military empire?  (Tongue-in-cheek.)

He probably means the Council of Conservative Citizens, whose isolationism, protectionism and nativism is genuine, because he knows that our trek to total national domination is proceeding as planned.

Baltimore Sun:

Texas has wanted to put Jose Medellin to death for a long time. It looks like the state is going to get its way.

The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday sided with Texas against the Bush administration in a highly charged dispute over whether international treaty obligations can affect state criminal proceedings.

In a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court rejected the administration’s claim that Texas should abide by a ruling from a world court that Medellin merited a new trial. Medellin is a Mexican native who has lived most of his life in the United States.

In 1993, Medellin and a gang of boys in Houston attacked, raped and murdered two teenage girls walking home. He was arrested, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to death.

After Medellin was convicted, Mexico brought suit in the International Court of Justice, the judicial body of the United Nations, charging that the U.S. had violated the Vienna Convention. That treaty requires that foreign nationals arrested in a signatory country be allowed to meet with a consular official from their home country. It’s a tool treasured by diplomats, American and otherwise, worldwide.

(snip)

Texas state courts have found repeatedly that under state law, Medellin has no right to challenge his conviction and sentence, even if the Vienna treaty was violated. There is no dispute that Medellin wasn’t notified of his treaty rights when he was arrested, but the state has argued he failed to raise that objection at trial, forfeiting the claim.

It’s tempting to think that this ruling means that SCOTUS loves the 10th Amendment and/or is suspicious of the reach of foreign treaties and their deleterious effects on the Bill of Rights.  But I’m not reading any of this into their decision.  All I think it means is that SCOTUS doesn’t think that the circumstances of the Medellin trial violate the terms of the Vienna Convention, and therefore President Bush had no authority to “mess with Texas.”  It’s not that they’re saying that Texas’s states’ rights supersede the Vienna Convention.

I do find it interesting that SCOTUS ignores internationalist reasoning here, but the same SCOTUS used the concept of world opinion to eliminate the death penalty for people under the age of 18 several years back.