What was Shirley Sherrod’s real offense?

They say that in war truth is the first casualty. If so, the experience of Shirley Sherrod points to the potentially tragic truth about America’s present political situation. On Monday night Fox news reported the story of an episode in which, as a USDA official “she appeared to deny a farmer help because he was white….” In fact, the remarks were only part of a seemingly edifying account of how she felt and overcame the impulse of racial resentment so that “working with him helped me to see that it wasn’t just a black and white issue.”

Andrew Breitbart’s anti-socialist website Biggovernment.com began the sequence of events that reportedly led a USDA deputy undersecretary to inform Sherrod that “the White House wanted her to resign… They called me twice… the last time they asked me to pull over the side of the road and submit my resignation on my Blackberry, and that’s what I did.” Biggovernment.com posted an objectively misleading video of her remarks at a local NAACP convention in Georgia that showed her describing her initially resentful reaction to the white farmer’s request, but left out her subsequent actions, in which she earned the farmer’s gratitude with her dedication to the work that helped him to save his family’s livelihood.

In the midst of the NAACP’s despicable effort to slander the Tea Party movement with false charges of racism, Breitbart’s website doubtless intended the video as a counterattack, illustrating the fact that the shoe is on the other foot; that the NAACP stirs and relies upon racially based anger and resentment. Under suspicion on account of allegations of racially biased favoritism by other Obama faction officials at the Justice Department, those at the USDA (and at the White House?) reacted defensively, concerned only to limit any damage the episode might inflict in the political wars.

Then Fox News picked up the story, apparently conveying the notion that Sherrod’s remarks involved racism. In fact, nothing in the full video of her speech justifies that imputation. She presents  her experience with the white farmer as a moving account of how a heart open to God’s direction was moved by the reality of injustice to do her all for another person, regardless of race.

But if you listen to Sherrod’s whole speech (now available in 4 parts, starting here at www.biggovernment.com), she only seems to focus her audience on the fact that the desire for justice is the common ground that can unify all people of decent conscience. What she actually does is replace one hateful motivation with another. She eschews the temptation of race hatred that pits black against white, in order to foment and exploit the class hatred that pits the poor against the rich. In the process she discusses with some accuracy the class warfare tactics involved in the invention and exploitation of the false premises of racism. But she does so only in order to replace them with the equally deceitful premises of Marxian dialectical historicism.

In this respect Sherrod’s speech reeks of a commitment to class warfare that further confirms the fundamentally ideological identity that permeates the Obama faction’s cadre, starting with Obama himself. Class hatred is the stuff that Marxism is made on. Its dialectical historiography imposes a simplistic paradigm that reduces human social possibilities to the interaction of only two classes, rich and poor. This of course excludes, or denies the possibility of a middle class whose existence does not depend on the inherently negative unifying force of opposition, but is instead derived from the positive unifying force that brings people together as a whole, in the name of permanent and self-evident principles of right and justice that limit the claims of all particular classes or groups.

Though not often remarked upon, this acknowledgement of a middle ground of human unity derived from respect for the permanent principles of justice distinguishes the trinitarian logic and pacific aims of the American founders from the duelistic, conflict dependent sophistry of Marxian historicism. I use the term trinitarian advisedly, of course, in order to suggest the connection between the point made here and the one developed in my last post regarding the inherent hostility between the elite project the Obama faction serves and the authority of the essentially Biblical Creator God invoked by America’s founders.

At various points in her speech Shirley Sherrod comes across as a person motivated by, and reliant upon a deep personal faith in God. Given the important role faith plays in the heritage of black Americans, this is not surprising. Was her summary dismissal (bureaucratically speaking, of course) really due to the evidently false charge of racism? Or did it owe something to the fact that her obvious personal reliance on the premise of God’s authority is inconsistent with the rejection of that authority required by both the faction she serves, and the Godless elite purpose for which it too is manipulated?  This is the purpose that ultimately obscures the truth: it’s not about white vs. black, or rich vs. poor- it’s about the justice God demands for all.

Could it be that Shirley Sherrod’s problem is that she really is a black American, with an identity that cannot ultimately be defined apart from her faith in God? If so, it makes sense that despite her reflexive deployment of class hateful leftist rhetoric, she’s truly out of place in the Obama faction’s aggressive pursuit of self-worshipping power. Of course, this is true of all people of faith (black or otherwise) presently willing to serve the Godless purposes of any faction involved in the present moral and spiritual degradation of America.

Related posts:

1. America’s real party system- Part 3
2. Planned Parenthood’s moral insanity
3. Obama’s Real Bow
4. Obama –The Equal Opportunity Hater?
5. Why Obama is America’s most (not post-) racial politician

Tagged as: Andrew Breitbart, class warfare, Marxism, NAACP, Obama faction, racism, Shirley Sherrod, USDA