Kamala re-Affirms Democrats’ Long-Held Racist, White Supremacist Ideological Core

Harris announces a new plan to empower Black men as she tries to energize them to vote for her, reported the Associated Press. Her scheme includes  [Youtube]

Vice President Kamala Harris announced a plan on Monday to give Black men more economic opportunities and other chances to thrive as she works to energize a key voting bloc that has Democrats concerned about a lack of enthusiasm.

Harris’ plan includes providing forgivable business loans for Black entrepreneurs, creating more apprenticeships and studying sickle cell and other diseases that disproportionately affect African American men.

Harris already has said she supports legalizing marijuana and her plan calls for working to ensure that Black men have opportunities to participate as a “national cannabis industry takes shape.” She also is calling for better regulating cryptocurrency to protect Black men and others who invest in digital assets.

Harris’s Opportunity Agenda for Black Men, according to her campaign website, is to "provide black men with the tools to achieve financial freedom, lower costs to better provide for themselves and their families, and protect their rights. This pathbreaking agenda includes: 

(1) Providing 1 million loans that are fully forgivable to Black entrepreneurs and others to start a business. 

(2) Championing education, training, and mentorship programs that help Black men get good-paying jobs in high-demand industries and lead their communities, including pathways to become teachers. 

(3) Supporting a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and other digital assets so Black men who invest in and own these assets are protected. 

(4) Launching a National Health Equity Initiative focused on Black Men that addresses sickle cell disease, diabetes, mental health, prostate cancer, and other health challenges that disproportionately impact them. 

(5) Legalizing recreational marijuana and creating opportunities for Black Americans to succeed in this new industry. 

Her so-called  “opportunity agenda for Black men” has rightly been tagged as a desperate vote-buying scheme. But there is a deeper meaning here. 

A desperate Kamala Harris, following Biden, re-affirms the Democratic Party's 196 year-old racist, white supremacist orientation. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision  declared that “African Americans were 'beings of an inferior order.”

The Democratic Party, in its 1856 and 1860 Party Platforms, fully endorsed Dred Scott and its assertion of blacks as “beings of an inferior order.” Then, the prevailing pro-slavery position—of which the Democratic Party officially embraced—held that Africans were like children who needed to be taken care of by plantation masters.The Party hasn’t changed its ideological stripes. Blacks still need that special help to succeed; only today, the state replaces the plantation master as the parent in the role of taking care of African-Americans. Harris’s plan, which follows on the heels of Biden’s racist schemes for black farmers and restaurateurs, makes this clear.

There is no room for equivocation here. It’s plain as day. How else to explain Harris’s regressive, explicitly racist anti-14th Amendment, anti-1964 Civil Rights Act policy. The Democratic Party continues to be, as it has been since its founding in 1828, the party of racism and white supremacy. Its policies and rationalizations have changed, but its fundamental values have not. 

[Supplemental: The Harris campaign apparently went swiftly into damage control. The Wall Street Journal reports that “Vice President Kamala Harris’s ‘Opportunity Agenda for Black Men’ . . . will be open to all Americans on a race-neutral basis.” Apparently, her loud, obvious rhetoric doesn’t mean what she says, based on two words, “and others.”  See point (1) above. Give me a break!This vague reference to race neutrality is likely inserted as a way of possibly getting around a Supreme Court, and the American public at large, that has largely lost its tolerance for racist policies, like Affirmative Action. But the intent is clear.]

Related Reading:

The Fight Against Biden’s Racist Policies is Having Some Success

The Dem's Jim Crow 2.0

Biden’s Racist Education Trial Balloon

‘Anti-Racism’, or the re-Mainstreaming of Racism

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Inspiring Climb to Supreme Court Nominee

The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’

The Gay Wedding Website Case—The “Right” to Enslave is Rolled Back

Can the state force a custom website designer to design a website for customers even if the merchant does not want to? In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the Supreme Court said no. 

This is a good rights-affirming ruling. The case was brought by Lorie Smith, the owner of 303 Creative, who, because of her Christian beliefs, didn’t want to design a wedding website for a same-sex couple. The case was decided on First Amendment grounds based on “compelled speech” doctrine. Compelled speech doctrine holds that the First Amendment prohibits anyone from being forced to say anything that she does not want to say. Megan McArdle explains in The Washington Post:

On the legal merits, the decision is correct; it would be hard to square a different ruling with previous high court jurisprudence that has affirmed broad rights of individual expression, including protections against compelled speech. (See, for example, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, in which the court ruled that California could not force crisis pregnancy centers to provide information about how to obtain abortions.) Government attempts to compel speech need an overwhelming rationale, and the court ruled that Colorado’s law doesn’t provide a sufficient one.

But there are other reasons to applaud the Supreme Court’s ruling. Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution protects the sanctity of contracts. A contract is a mutually voluntary agreement. That’s what sanctifies contracts. A contract isn’t legitimate unless both sides agree. Lorie Smith has every right not to enter a contract. The rights of the same-sex couple seeking to contract with Smith are not violated any more than the rights of Christians who oppose same-sex marriage are violated by legalization of same-sex marriage. There is no “”right” to force a contract on others. A forced contract is a contradiction in terms. Freedom of contract is in fact a derivative of the right to freedom of association, which is one of the First Amendment’s five key individual rights.

The other reason stems from the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits both slavery and involuntary servitude. Clearly, forcing Smith to design a website against her will is involuntary servitude. Please don’t remind me that designing a website is nothing like the brutality faced by slaves on Southern slave plantations. No, it’s not. But the principle still applies. The 13th Amendment makes no distinctions regarding degree. It states simply, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” This means that involuntary servitude in any degree or on any level, other than the exception noted,* is outlawed. Note that there is no exception regarding anti-discrimination law.

At this point, let me state unequivocally that I find the web designer’s refusal to serve the gay couple abhorrent. But this is about individual rights. It’s not about some alleged “right” to force Smith to do the work. It’s about her right not to. Her refusal does not in any way, shape, or form “roll back LBGTQ+ rights”—as the Left frames it—since no one has the “right” to force Smith, even by law. This is not a gay rights case. This is an equal individual rights case. In this case, on multiple levels, individual rights were upheld against a tyrannical state.

* [The exception is a point of contention because of the possibility of abuse.]

Related Reading:

Contra the NY Times, a SCOTUS Case Does Not ‘Pit Gay Rights Against Religion’

Gay Marriage: The Right to Voluntary Contract, Not to Coercive “Contract”

Does rescinding laws banning private discrimination make a moral statement in support of bigotry?

The False Alternative of Religious Rights vs. Gay Rights—Michael J. Hurd

Kim Davis vs. Liberty Ridge Farm

Court Violates Cake Baker’s Right Not to Serve Gay Weddings—Ari Armstrong for The Objective Standard

‘Bigotry Motivated by Religion is Still Bigotry’—True, but Still an Individual Right

Fine Against Christian Baker Who refused to Serve a Pro-Gay Marriage Cake Exposes Hypocrisy on Both Sides

Others’ Opinions:

CON: I’m not a lawyer. But I see what the same-sex wedding website case will mean.

PRO:  In the court’s ruling on gay wedding websites, free speech won

QUORA: “What would the founding fathers have thought of the ruling that 'corporations are people'?”

 QUORA: “What would the founding fathers have thought of the ruling that 'corporations are people'?”

I posted this answer:

No one ever said that corporations are actual people. But there is a legal doctrine called corporate personhood, to which the question probably refers, and which the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized. As  the Court noted in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the purpose of the doctrine of corporate personhood is to “to provide protection for human beings” organized under a corporation. “When rights . . . are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people.” (See my essay Corporate Personhood” Clarified.) 

As the Supreme Court noted in Citizens United, corporations are associations of individuals. "The First Amendment,” the Court held, “prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." Corporations are obviously associations of individuals. Therefore, the government cannot “ban political speech because the speaker is an association with a corporate form.” If it could, “Its censorship [would be] vast in its reach, suppressing the speech of both for-profit and nonprofit, both small and large, corporations.” Significantly, the Court noted that media corporations could be targeted if people couldn’t speak under the corporate form. [my emphasis]

The doctrine of “corporate personhood” is an expression of the individual right of freedom of association. Freedom of association is recognized by the First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” This means that a number of individuals may voluntarily assemble as a means of collectively exercising their inalienable rights, including rights to property and free speech. The “personhood” of a corporation is merely an extension of the rights of the people who comprise the corporation for a limited purpose, such as to manage productive activity or to speak as one voice. Corporations are therefore not “people” apart from or superior to the individuals that comprise it, but an extension of the members’ individual rights. Individuals that voluntarily join groups like corporations neither lose nor gain rights. 

The Founding Fathers, as creators of a country based upon individual rights, would approve of the doctrine “corporate personhood,” in my view. Corporate personhood is merely a legal fiction that stands for actual individual human beings. After all, they crafted the First Amendment to unite freedom of speech and assembly. This was no accident. How could they not agree with the doctrine of corporate personhood?

Related Reading:

“Corporate Personhood” Clarified

QUORA: ‘Since corporations are not actual people, how does John Roberts justify legally defining them as such?’

"Corporatists" Are Individuals, Too

If Citizens United is Overturned, Michael Moore’s Film Would be Banned. But Does the Left Care?

Citizens United and the Battle for Free Speech in America by Steve Simpson for The Objective Standard

On the Respect for Marriage Act

Congress has passed the  Respect for Marriage Act, and it will become law upon President Biden’s expected signature. In Bill protecting same-sex, interracial unions clears Congress

Mary Clare Jalonick reported for The Associated Press,

The legislation would not require states to allow same-sex couples to marry, as Obergefell now does. But it would require states to recognize all marriages that were legal where they were performed and protect current same-sex unions if the Supreme Court decision were overturned.

This is a preemptive act, in case the same-sex marriage right recognized in Obergefell v. Hodges is overturned. As I wrote on Facebook, This is a very good bill, in my view consistent with Federalism and the 14th Amendment. 

The 14th Amendment states that 

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. [my emphasis]

Note that U.S. citizenry supersedes state citizenry, in terms of “privileges or immunities,” i.e. individual rights. This Amendment, one of the so-called “Civil War Amendments,” was a monumental advance for individual rights. The U.S. Constitution now made explicit what was implicit from the Founding—that no longer can any state violate the Federally guaranteed rights of any American, by, say, enslaving them, denying them the right to vote, or violating any other inalienable individual right. 

Of course, the Respect for Marriage Act is wholly unnecessary as long as Obergefell v. Hodges, the pro-14th Amendment SCOTUS ruling that nullified state laws banning same-sex marriage, is not overturned. But it is not at all certain that the SCOTUS will not overturn Obergefell given the horrendous anti-Constitutional reasoning behind the shockingly reactionary Dobbs ruling, which ignored the Ninth Amendment and 14th Amendments and violated the Constitution’s philosophic conscience, the Declaration of Independence, to overturn Roe v. Wade.

* [Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law on December 13, 2022, USA Today reported.]

Related Reading:

Gay Marriage and Individual Rights

ObamaCare and Gay Marriage Rulings: One Loss and One Win for the Right

In SCOTUS’ Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Abortion Ruling: Double Standards of Left and Right Exposed

Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty by Randy E. Barnett  

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty by Timothy Sandefur

In SCOTUS’ Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Abortion Ruling: Double Standards of Left and Right Exposed

First, let me reiterate my position on abortion. I support a woman’s unfettered right to have an abortion during the early stages of pregnancy. This is essentially what Roe v. Wade, which applies to the first trimester, says. 

 

The news of a leaked United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) draft opinion indicated that SCOTUS is close to overturning Roe v. Wade. This has prompted me to make some observations. It seems that some pretty big chickens are coming home to roost on both sides of the abortion debate. For the sake of argument, I’ll refer to the pro-abortion side as “Left”, and the anti-abortion side as “Right”.

 

Of course, the draft is not the final decision, which could be different, perhaps majorly so. So for what it’s worth, below are some excerpts, followed by my thoughts.

 

In a New York Times piece by Kate Zernike, Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham, Leaked Threat to Roe v. Wade Stuns, Then Energizes Americans, there were several references to rights and freedom. This is interesting in light of the Left’s general antipathy to the concept of rights and limited republican government as understood by the Founders. This passage, in particular, caught my eye:

Jordyn McFadden, a first-year law student at Washington University in St. Louis who was studying outside a Starbucks, said the draft ruling that suggests Roe v. Wade will be overturned made her see the Supreme Court as “tyrannical.”

 

“Just another political body,” said Ms. McFadden, 23, who is from New Hampshire. “It’s insane to me that an unelected body can control the right” to have an abortion. “And after how many years of having the right to an abortion with Roe v. Wade? Now it’s completely over.” 

But in 1973, elected state legislatures across the country had outlawed abortion. The unelected U.S. Supreme Court overturned these laws on Constitutional grounds. Why precisely do we have the independent, unelected Supreme Court? As a check on the elected branches of the government! This unelected body’s role and duty is to consider legislative or executive branch actions in a constitutional context, and if necessary overturn laws that violate the U.S. Constitution and thus violate individual rights. To fulfill that role, the Founders understood, the Court needed to be free of political or popular pressures. Hence, lifetime tenure and unelected status.

The fact that the SCOTUS all too often fails in its responsibility to uphold the Constitution and protect individual rights does not negate the crucial checks-and-balances Constitutional role of the SCOTUS and the Federal court system overall. The Founders well understood that elected legislatures can be thoroughly tyrannical. Indeed, Roe v. Wade was an instance of this unelected body properly doing its job of protecting individual rights from tyrannical state legislatures. The Court overturned state laws banning abortion in the first trimester. 

Yet, McFadden wants to place abortion rights back under the control of elected legislatures, and remove it as a right protected by the Constitution, where abortion rights would remain protected from legislative encroachment and abridgement. Indeed, in the leaked draft opinion written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Alito agrees with McFadden that “the people’s elected representatives” should “‘control the right’ to have an abortion.” Alito wrote:

Our nation’s historical understanding of ordered liberty does not prevent the people’s elected representatives from deciding how abortion should be regulated.

It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives. [my emphasis]

 

And that’s exactly what repealing Roe would do: Repeal would strip the right of abortion—the right of the individual to control her own body, the Right to Life—from ironclad national Constitutional protection and switch the fate of that right into the hands of elected legislatures, where about half the states would violate that right and outlaw most abortions!

True, the current court will, if it overturned Roe, have reneged on its proper function. But one bad ruling does not repudiate the Court’s independent role. McFadden’s position highlights a giant chicken coming home to roost over the Left. The Left’s infatuation with Democracy and the right to vote as paramount was made explicit by Leftist intellectuals for decades. Indeed, President Joe Biden recently made the Left’s premise perfectly clear. Said Biden: 

The fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow. 

This premise is a direct repudiation of Americanism, with roots tracing back to the founding of the Democratic Party in 1828. Protecting “certain unalienable rights” of the individual from the encroachments of elected bodies is precisely what the Constitution is designed to do, and the Supreme Court is designed to uphold. But according to the Democratic Party’s radical and reactionary reinterpretation of the American Founding, America is a democracy, not a constitutionally limited republic. To the Left, the right to vote, rather than unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property, is primary. The exact meaning of Biden’s declaration is that all other rights, including abortion rights, are fair game for elections and elected legislatures. Democracy, in other words, trumps individual rights.

Removing abortion from the ironclad protection of the constitution, and turning its fate over to elected bodies (or electoral referendums), is precisely what the draft opinion, if it holds, would do. After decades of ranting that every part of our lives, liberties, and properties are up for grabs in every election, why is the Left now so enraged? Isn’t Alito’s statement exactly what they have been wishing for? After all, this is the same party that once stood for the idea that slavery should be decided state by state, either by elected legislatures or by popular referendum.

The Left’s dogmatic prioritizing of voting rights over all other rights is coming back to haunt them. And it is a Conservative-leaning SCOTUS that is delivering exactly what they wished for. Welcome home, giant chicken.

Which leads to the equally huge double standard from the Right.

In another New York Times piece by Maria Cramer, Here are key passages from the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion, this phrase by Alito is stunning:

We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.

I thought conservatives were the champions of the Constitution? I thought conservatives understood that the Constitution is a check on the government’s powers, not a grant of rights. I thought they understood that rights precede government, as the Declaration of Independence clearly states. And that “To secure these rights,” it says, “governments are instituted among men, drawing their just powers from the consent of the governed.” 

True, “the Constitution makes no reference to abortion.” And that’s the point. No where does the Constitution grant government the power to ban abortion, or more generally to infringe the individual’s right to his or her right to control the functions of their own bodies? It just doesn’t.

It is NOT true that “no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” The Ninth Amendment states unequivocally that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Conservatives may try to claim that the “original intent” of the drafters of the Constitution did not include abortion in the unenumerated rights retained by the people. But that bit of wishful thinking clashes with the hard, precise meaning of the Ninth Amendment. No objective reading of that Amendment can possibly conclude that a woman’s right to terminate a reproductive function of her own body is not one of the unenumerated rights.The text is clear. The words are clear. The Constitution does not record “intent.” It explicitly states. It says what it says.

There you have it. The Left’s professed uncompromising allegiance to absolute democracy has been shattered. It is getting what it pounds the table for—democracy unconstrained by constitutional protections for individual rights. The Left denies and disparages rights on democratic grounds—until a right it values comes under attack. The Right’s claim to be uncompromising defenders of the Constitution is likewise shattered. It upholds the Constitution—until the Constitution protects a right Conservatives don’t like. 

Related Reading:

Abortion and Individual Rights - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Defending Reproductive Rights Depends Upon Upholding All Rights

The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties, by Diana Hsieh and Ari Armstrong for The Objective Standard

Abortion Rights are Pro-Life, by Leonard Piekoff for HUFFPOST

Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty by Randy E. Barnett  

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty by Timothy Sandefur