What The Free Man Wants

posted at 8:19 pm on April 13, 2009 by Kid from Brooklyn

Throughout the Summer of Hopenchange, much was said about the transformative nature of the candidacy of Barack Obama.  Many historical figures were invoked as our sloberring media struggled to find someone with whom to compare the One.  Reagan?  JFK?  FDR?  Lincoln?  Cyrus (indeed, is “Yes, We Can” not the new “Can you Dig It”)?  For all the comparisons and hosannas, thankfully, one name was never mentioned.  I recall never once having heard anyone mention Frederick Douglass within the historical context of the Obama candidacy.  And given what he had to say about so-called affirmative action and other types of government intervention, perhaps it’s for the better.  This is one comparison our Dear Leader would be well served to avoid.  The Original Civil Rights Leader made little effort to show his disdain for any scheme designed to deprive men of their liberty.  In his classic “What The Black Man Wants”, he lays waste to the notion that one’s individual course is better decided by more enlightened minds.

Gen. Banks was distressed with solicitude as to what he should do with the Negro. Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, “What shall we do with the Negro?” I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot- box, let him alone, don’t disturb him! [Applause.] If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone,–your interference is doing him a positive injury. Gen. Banks’ “preparation” is of a piece with this attempt to prop up the Negro. Let him fall if he cannot stand alone! If the Negro cannot live by the line of eternal justice, so beautifully pictured to you in the illustration used by Mr. Phillips, the fault will not be yours, it will be his who made the Negro, and established that line for his government. [Applause.] Let him live or die by that. If you will only untie his hands, and give him a chance, I think he will live. He will work as readily for himself as the white man.

Fast forward to 2009, and it is Barack Obama playing the role of General Banks, distressed with his own “solicitudes”; and after all these years, the remedy is still the same notwithsanding individual circumstance.  We only need substitute “the Homeowner” or “the taxpayer”, for “the Negro” to capture the timeless prescience of Mr. Douglass’ words.  Viewed under the harsh light of history, these are not just words…not just speeches, but an enduring expression of the inalienable right to liberty with which our Creator endowed us.  Take note, Mr. President…for this is what true hope looks like.  And this hope, like Mr. Douglass’, is strong enough to endure you.

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