Why aren’t there more black libertarians? – Orange County Register

Many people might say that the intimate group I am about to talk about is only slightly larger than the African-American membership in the Klu Klux Klan, or perhaps the number of Blacks on the White Citizens’ Council in those days. 1960 in the South, or so.

You get the picture. For some reason, there aren’t many of us.

But many of you reading this book at this time, while not of African ancestry, may or may actually be a politician or a liberal philosopher, or both. And if so, you may be more inclined to recruit and support African-American involvement in a future political movement not tied to a particular gravy train. I believe that later thought conveys what is responsible for so much of the failure of prosperity and harmony in our nation today.

So let’s start with who is a libertarian, since the so-called bad luck is pretty obvious?

Many people who define a libertarian as a self-proclaimed, freedom-loving, or some abstract definition, arrive at the opposite definition, which is more thought-provoking: “a libertarian: by a person who believes that no individual has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force, fraud or coercion against another, or to support or authorize initiation. So those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who do not act consistently with it are not libertarians, no matter what they may claim,” in the words of one of my esteemed libertarian author, L. Neil Smith.

So, who are the prominent black or African-American (or African-American) liberals in this country today?

Larry Sharpe, of the Big Apple, comes to mind first, with his podcast and the announcement that he will once again run for governor of New York. Sharpe was an entrepreneur with a natural gift for translating the intricacies of liberal principles into understandable language. “I would love to have a society based solely on voluntary associations. That would be great. I don’t think I’ll see that in my life, so the closest thing I can get to it – that’s what I want,” Sharpe once said.

Dr. Anne Wortham was a Black Presence and was one of the few female voices in the Liberal Party and movement before I became active in 1983. Her academic competence took precedence over participation. her political career until she retired as a respected professor at the State of Illinois. University a few years ago.

“The harmony and stability of the collectivist society that Rousseau and Durkheim envisioned depended on people seeing the constraints of society and the sovereign will of the state as the natural order of things. ,” she wrote in a 2012 review of President Barack Obama. “They must also convey to civil society the commitment they have traditionally kept sacred, and schools must teach children the importance of political community claims to their allegiance. them and their commitment to corporate ethics.”

Liberals, along with Wortham, understand well the dangers of such collectivist societies.

A graduate of Duke University, scientist and marathon runner Wilton Alston has become an important voice of Black liberalism as a prolific writer over the past two to three decades, in when you actually speak, write, appear on radio and television, and run for public office as a Liberal for many years.

In May 2020, Alston bravely spoke out against the lockdown. “Continued closures will not only harm the economically vulnerable, but it could harm the entire population in the future. It seems clear that the damage from the lockdown has far outweighed even the imaginary gains from the flattening of the curve,” he wrote in a commentary for the Freedom Institute.

Then there is radio presenter Brian Thomas in New Bedford, Massachusetts, former LP National Committee member Joseph Brennan, formerly in Brooklyn, now in London, for many years.

Given the vast size and diversity of our nation, the changes are that there are others who have recently joined LP groups around the country and will soon be heard, as one considers the timing. and the fixed policies of the “Two-Party Party” throughout.

I also know of a few “Free Blacks” (can’t resist it): Maj Toure of Black Guns Matter from Philadelphia, who advocates and defends legal gun ownership in the Black community. And oh yes, there’s Larry Elder, who once claimed to be one of us, but in the early 2000s seemed to defend and become an advocate for America’s illiberal foreign policy in the Middle East in the Middle East. Iraq and other interventions.

I bet you’ve been wondering why by the time you’ve read this far two of the most famous Black libertarians ever go unmentioned. I want to see if you are paying attention. Who are they? None other than the late economists Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams, of course, who left us in December 2020.

Both these intellectual giants generally despise the label of freedom, but if you really understand the liberal philosophy with which this nation was founded hundreds of years ago, along with its complementary and successful understanding, well-versed in non-Keynesian economics, they qualify quite clearly as libertarians.

I often joke that there are only three African-American or Black libertarians on earth: Williams, Sowell and I, and we signed a pact never to fly in the same plane. for a while, for fear of losing all black libertarians in one. Accident.

Understanding basic economic concepts tends to enhance one’s understanding of the real world, and most Americans don’t even begin to understand anything about economics, let alone their civilian counterparts. My people, who are still trying to achieve parity in the basics of life, are no less trying to understand even basic economics.

Historically, black Americans have been predominantly Republicans since that party’s founding. However, the promises of the FDR under the New Deal transferred nearly all Black voters to the Democratic Party from the 1930s on. I assert that no group has “liberated us,” and the latter seems to take Blacks for granted these days, or to treat us like pets rather than free people. We African Americans happen to be like all citizens, separate and distinct individuals, not a voting bloc, tribe or the like. Republican or Democrat, name your poison. The state’s brute force under both parties has failed us all.

And in my nearly four decades of activity in the Liberal Party at all levels and the freedom and freedom movement, I can say the Liberal Party has always stood for true freedom. It is the freedom that has eluded us and so many people have sought and died for over the centuries, which is exactly what the principles of liberalism are about. The founders understood that, and so do you, not just the Blacks, if you really think about it.