Black pastor: Reid's 'slavery' reference 'deplorable'

DOCTOR'S ORDERS

Black pastor: Reid's 'slavery' reference 'deplorable'
'Remarks are a diversion tactic by a despot leader of a desperate Democrat party'

Posted: December 11, 2009
12:10 am Eastern
By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

http://www.wnd.com/images/misc/Standup.jpg
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson

The black pastor who leads Bond Action Inc. in support of "family, traditional moral values, and positive, honest race relations" says U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., should be ashamed of comparing opposition to President Obama's plans to socialize medicine in the U.S. to support for slavery.

"Reid's comparison of legitimate Republican opposition towards the Democrats $2.5 trillion health care plan to segregationists is deplorable," Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson said today. "This was an attempt to smear Republicans as racists in order to take the focus off the details of this awful socialist health care bill. Reid's remarks are a diversion tactic by a despot leader of a desperate Democrat party. "

Reid had said, "Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let's start over.' If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right."

Reid continued, "When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.' When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn't quite right. When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."

Reid has stood by his remarks since making them, sparking outrage from Peterson.

"Harry Reid should be ashamed of himself. He knows that throughout history, the Democrats have been the party of segregationists and Ku Klux Klan members. It's common knowledge that Republicans supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act in greater numbers than the Democrats – and without GOP support the bill wouldn't have passed. Maybe Reid should consult with his colleague Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., who was a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan about the racist legacy of his own party," Peterson said.

Bond Action is a group that exists "to educate, motivate and rally Americans to greater involvement in the moral, cultural and political issues that threaten our great country."

Peterson noted that Reid's history is checkered.

"In 2004, this same Harry Reid called President George W. Bush a 'liar' on NBC’s Meet The Press. In 2007, Reid prematurely and falsely declared that the U.S. had 'lost' the war in Iraq. And in 2008, he showed his disdain for the American people by saying that tourists were stinking up the Capitol with their body odor," Peterson said.

"This bill is not progress. It will limit our choices and destroy the best health care system in the world. Harry Reid is a wicked man and he's only interested in staying in power. Neither he nor Barack Obama can be trusted."

Officials for Project 21, the national leadership network of black conservatives, were equally outraged.

"Harry Reid has resorted to the most shopworn trick in the liberal playbook. He deployed the race card in the ugliest way while debating health care reform," said Deroy Murdock, a Project 21 member and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

"It is astonishing and outrageous to equate those who seek the defeat of Reid's 2,074-page, $2.5 trillion legislative monstrosity with those who were happy to keep blacks in chains, unpaid for their back-breaking labor and traded back and forth like cattle. The fact that Reid would use such deplorable, insulting and insensitive rhetoric indicates that he is out of credible arguments to defend his own proposal," Murdock said.

"The Senate's top Democrat owes an immediate apology to Republicans on Capitol Hill, the 39 House Democrats who voted against Obamacare on November 7 and the 51 percent of Americans from coast to coast who a Rasmussen survey recently found are against Obamacare," Murdock said.

"If Reid believes these Americans who object to his high-cost, low-quality legislation also hold warm feelings for slavery, he is further removed from reality than anyone so far has feared. If he does not believe this, he should stop cynically firing rhetorical mortar shells at decent Americans who merely disagree with his spendthrift, Big Government approach to health care."

Michal Massie, the chairman of Project 21, also cited Reid's apparent misunderstanding of history.

"Why is history so confusing to Harry Reid? Six of the nine original planks of the Republican Party at its inception in 1856 were based on opposition to slavery and promoting civil rights," said Massie. "Did Reid also forget what party Lyndon Johnson worked with to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only passed but to even get it through committee and onto the floor for a vote?

"One of the Democratic opponents – Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., a former Klansman – is still serving today and is third in the presidential line of succession as the president pro tem. Reid's daring to brand opponents as racist is indicative of how far liberals are willing to go in order to control Americans from the cradle to the grave," he said.

Dr. Allen Unruh, a Midwest activist for tea party events in opposition to Obama's socialized medical plans, said it is Reid – and Obama – who actually want slavery for the American people.

"What does the 13th amendment to the Constitution say about slavery?" he told WND. "It says, 'Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.'

"When a doctor is told by government bureaucrats what services he can and cannot provide against his better judgment – that's involuntary servitude. When a doctor takes an oath to 'first do no harm' but is told to harm a patient with denied necessary care – that's involuntary servitude," he said.

"When the value of a doctor's services are pre-determined by government bureaucrats, and not based on free markets, or the value of his knowledge and experience – that's involuntary servitude," he said. "The government is in essence stealing the intellectual property of health care professionals, under threat of six figure fines and imprisonment if they don't comply with [the] government's cookbook guidelines which are mainly adopted for cost containment and to match global budgets."

He said, "If doctors are slaves of the state that means their patients are wards of the state. Your health care will be determined by global budgets. There will be zero incentive for doctors to improve their service or do research or utilize new technology to help patients with chronic pain."

He said, "Our first black president wants to institutionalize slavery for America on a much larger scale than we had 100 years ago. Let the debate over who is a slave to who begin. The dictionary defines a slave as someone entirely under the domination of some influence or person."

WND previously has reported that the original targets of the Ku Klux Klan were Republicans, both black and white, according to a television program and book.

An estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites died at the end of KKK ropes from 1882 to 1964.

The documentation has been assembled by David Barton of Wallbuilders and published in his book "Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White," which reveals that not only did the Democrats work hand-in-glove with the Ku Klux Klan for generations, they started the KKK and endorsed its mayhem.

"Of all forms of violent intimidation, lynchings were by far the most effective," Barton said in his book. "Republicans often led the efforts to pass federal anti-lynching laws and their platforms consistently called for a ban on lynching. Democrats successfully blocked those bills and their platforms never did condemn lynchings."

Further, the first grand wizard of the KKK was honored at the 1868 Democratic National Convention, no Democrats voted for the 14th Amendment to grant citizenship to former slaves and, to this day, the party website ignores those decades of racism, he said.

"Although it is relatively unreported today, historical documents are unequivocal that the Klan was established by Democrats and that the Klan played a prominent role in the Democratic Party," Barton writes in his book. "In fact, a 13-volume set of congressional investigations from 1872 conclusively and irrefutably documents that fact.

"Contributing to the evidences was the 1871 appearance before Congress of leading South Carolina Democrat E.W. Seibels who testified that 'they [the Ku Klux Klan] belong to the reform part – [that is, to] our party, the Democratic Party,'" Barton writes.

"The Klan terrorized black Americans through murders and public floggings; relief was granted only if individuals promised not to vote for Republican tickets, and violation of this oath was punishable by death," he said. "Since the Klan targeted Republicans in general, it did not limit its violence simply to black Republicans; white Republicans were also included."

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=118604