The Confused Bernie Sanders

I hope that every person in this room today understands that it is unacceptable to judge people, discriminate against people based on the color of their skin. And I will also say, that as a nation — the truth is a nation that in many ways was created, and I’m sorry to have to say this from way back, on racist principles, that’s a fact. We have come a long way as a nation. Now I know, my guess is that probably not everybody here is an admirer or a voter for Barack Obama, but the point is that in 2008, this country took a huge step forward in voting for a candidate based on his ideas and not the color of his skin.

Bernie Sanders

Gee, what are these racist founding principles?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Declaration of Independence

That stands up just fine today and, I hope, Senator Sanders would agree.  Did the United States live up to these principles?  No, clearly not.  In fact, it fell far short of the bar it set.  But the founding principles are as sound today as they were in 1776.  Some might quibble about the use of 'men' rather than a neuter term, but it is otherwise unassailable.  Though the country initially failed to live up to the principles that it championed, it eventually fought a Civil War that remains the bloodiest conflict in American history to rectify that.  Even then, there was still much to do and, a hundred years after the Civil War ended, the Civil Rights movement swept away the state-sponsored discrimination that remained.  That was fifty years ago.  Since then, we have seen two black justices on the Supreme Court, two black Secretaries of State, a black Attorney General, and President Barack Obama.  Sounds like the country finally arrived at the goal it stated almost 250 years ago.  In short, the principles were just fine, it was the implementation of them that was a problem.

 

Also, Barack Obama was elected not for his ideas - which were massively rejected in the 2010 'shellacking' election, but because he was black.  A white candidate with the same ideas would have been trounced (e.g. George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, et al).  Many hoped that electing a black man as president would finally put an end to Racist America.  Really, how can the country be racist if it elects a black man?  Instead, thanks to Obama himself, it got worse but that's a blog for another day.