Former Fundies, Evangelicals, and Death of a Salesman

I have mused over the last week about an exchange on Facebook with a friend who, like me, is an Evangelical and Reformed believer. She was sincerely adamant about certain conservative thinkers using terms like "objective legal standard" or "food stamp president" as code words for white racism.

So, I asked some other friends who are conservative, and are black. The scratched their heads figuratively.

I later listened to Congressman Allen West, who himself has been black for some time, and is a conservative by birth - - or is it the other way around?

I also heard J.C. Watts, former QB of the Oklahoma Sooners, former Oklahoma Secretary of State, Former Congressman, and I would say a potential Veep candidate.

He supports Newt, one of the code-speak offenders.

So, why do white liberals, who are former fundamentalist Christians and/or current Evangelical Christians (there is a BIG difference) buy into the code-speak thing?

Well, I worked it in reverse. I WAS a liberal, so much so that I could have made Nancy Pelosi look like Jesse Helms.

I protested outside the South African mission to the UN protesting apartheid. I still think the policy was wrong, by the way.

I was the typical Southern white liberal student who wanted to change things. I was angry.

And I did not want to be looked down upon by people from up North.

Then it hit me!

The unseen actor on the thinking of liberal former Fundamentalists and liberal Evangelicals was and is -

WILLY LOMAN!!!!!

You know. The protagonist in the Tennesee Williams play, Death of a Salesman

He wanted everyone to like him. He was obsessed with the idea. He guided his sons with exhortations that the way to succeed in life was to get everyone to like you.

So, liberals and progressives in general are hypersensitive to anything that remotely looks like it could offend.

As such, discourse is chilled, otherwise acceptable words are relegated to a trash heap of language, and

Grace is sacrificed on the altar of a legalistic moral code.

The bad news, the ex-Fundamentalists are still Fundamentalists, but in a better part of town.

The good news - the right people like them!

By the way, Willy's obsession eventually led to self-destruction.

The "Quotes from Self-Loathing Colored People" Department

Those of you who have followed me on Facebook may remember that up until the Fall of 1975 I was - and this is a technical term - LEFT-WING-FLAMING-WACKO-LIBERAL.

I know. It is hard for me to believe it, but it is true.

And, like most LWFWLs, I had prejudices about black people. You see, when I was an angry young white kid from the South, I assumed that all liberals and progressives like me were beyond prejudice, especially about black people.

My experience and observation was that we LWFWLs had these biases towards our tellow-travelers-of-color:

Black people were always:

1. Democrat
2. Liberal
3. 1 and 2 were governed by fixed and immutable laws of physics.

My biases there began to crumble when, over the course of a few years I met in Oklahoma, Black Republicans, who were Conservative Black Republicans, who were Conservative Black Republicans.

It was, to put it mildly, world-view changing. When Bill Clinton had his encounter with Herman Cain in 1994, I sympathized.

This election cycle, I have observed a surprising number of CBRs (Conservative Black Republicans) who are running, commenting, and winning.

I have also observed a significant increase of insidious white racists, who want to turn back the clock and keep the black person on the plantation, surpressing any independently arrived at thought.

Who are these "Kloset Klansmen?"

Tea Party members?

Chamber of Commerce types?

Bob Jones University students?

NO! They are Liberals. Not the Daniel Patrick Moynihan "anti-totalitarian/pro-social progress" liberals.

These are the "JFK was wrong about American exceptionalism" liberals.

You know them. They

1. Dismiss Herman Cain as being paid to run by Conservative White People
2. Dismiss Black Tea Party members as a statistically insignificant group,
3. Completely redact elected Black Conservatives, e.g. Tim Scott of SC and Allen West of FL as aberrations, and
4. Dismiss economists e.g. Thomas Sowell as a intellectually light-weight.

Looking at what these more fully evolved White People are saying about Black Conservatives, I have concluded that, alas, they are right.

(Not really, but saying so makes the end of this post easier to reach.)

I for one, want to help the More Fully Evolved White People get the word out - that Black Conservatives are SELF LOATHING COLORED PEOPLE.

So today, Juggling Wolverines launches a new department - the QUOTES FROM SELF-LOATHING COLORED PEOPLE DEPARTMENT.

"What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long."

-Thomas Sowell

All We are Saaayyyinng is Give Wealth a Chance

‎"I would rather have 10,000 rich men handing out jobs than one (guy) at the top talking about "shovel ready" projects." ~ James Patrick Riley

Someone passed the quote above to me earlier. I posted it on Facebook and a liberal friend of mine - What? I used to be a liberal, so why can't I have liberal friends.

Anyway - this friend pointed out that a term for which I made a parenthetical replacement may have been disrespectful.

Without the term, Riley's statement remains valid. Even the President had to admit - much as Roosevelt's Treasury chief in 1938 - that the shovel ready projects were not so shovel ready.

So, what's the alternative? The billionaires, millionaires, and mass affluents that the President wants to pay their fair share?

Well, maybe he would have a point if those guys kept their money hoarded. 


But they don't.

They buy things. They invest. They start companies.

All of those things mean that women and men have to be hired to get the jobs done.

So, to paraphrase John Lennon.

Let's "give wealth a chance."