"[The] left became so ideologically attached to anti-Americanism and
pro-communism and Third Worldism that I believe we have a problem on
our hands" - Eldridge Cleaver

A Washington Post columnist by the name of Colbert King recently
compared the "Tea Party supporters and their right-wing fellow
travelers" to the angry mobs who used threats, intimidation, and even
murder to prevent the "landmark civil rights laws" of the 1960s.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...032603335.html

According to King,

The angry '50s and '60s crowds threatened and intimidated; some among
them even murdered. That notwithstanding, Americans of goodwill
gathered in the White House to witness the signing of landmark civil
rights laws.

King reminds his readers that although "[s]choolhouse doors were
blocked and little children were demeaned," the "bigots didn't get the
last word. Justice rolled down like a mighty river, sweeping them
aside."

And while comparing present-day Tea Party anger to the abuse, lies,
insults, and vandalism characteristic of yesteryear's George Wallace
brigades, King is confident that "progress" today will prevail as it
did back in the '60s:

Those angry faces won't go away. But neither can they stand in the way
of progress. The mobs of yesteryear were on the wrong side of history.
Tea Party supporters and their right-wing fellow travelers are on the
wrong side now. It shows up in their faces.

While reflecting on Colbert King's words, I too began to reminisce
about some of the violent, angry faces in my own past.

Back in the early 1980s, I was sitting in Wheeler Hall at UC Berkeley
with hundreds of other students, waiting rather impatiently to see a
man who clearly embodied much of the turmoil, outrage, and overall
ethos of the 1960s: ex-Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver.

Cleaver combined his roles as radical philosopher and warrior for the
oppressed to serve the Black Panthers as Minister of Information
shortly after his release from Folsom prison in 1966. Cleaver hit the
national stage in 1968 when he published a collection of his prison
writings, Soul on Ice, which combines a visceral hatred for America
with black liberation theology, admissions about "insurrectionary"
rape, a spiritual odyssey, and a search for personal meaning in a
racist environment.

Perhaps Shane Stevens of The Progressive captured the essence of
Cleaver's book best when he said in a review, "The hell is there, and
its name is America." Indeed, the raw power of Cleaver's remarkable
and revealing eloquence in Soul on Ice made him a favorite on college
campuses and also among legions of leftist intellectuals.

I read Soul on Ice as a teenager and was floored by the radical
difference between the violent and turbulent streets of Cleaver's
young life and the strawberry fields and apple orchards that girded
the quiet dirt roads I strolled along during my own youth on a farm.

Cleaver's life took yet another violent turn in April of 1968 when he
helped organize an ambush of the Oakland city police. The resulting
shootout left fellow Panther Bobby Hutton dead, two police officers
injured, and Cleaver charged with attempted murder. To avoid more time
in prison, Cleaver left the country for Cuba and other communist
destinations such as North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union, where
he was heralded as a celebrity by authorities in each government, who
also helped provide for his living.

By 1975, however, Cleaver had learned firsthand about the crushing
weight of the state in the communist world. He experienced a personal
transformation that left him longing for life back in America. And
despite being vilified and called a traitor by his colleagues on the
left, Cleaver began openly defending American values and traditions in
speeches and interviews upon his return.

Sitting in the crowd at UC Berkeley some years after Cleaver's
repatriation, I again thought about what this compelling and exotic
man might be able to teach me about America. When the audience began
hissing and sneering, I realized that Cleaver had arrived.

It has been over twenty-five years, but I still remember Cleaver's
imposing figure strolling across the stage, unfazed by heckling and
howling that met him from some in the audience. As Cleaver rested his
large, black hands on the podium, I heard voices in the back snapping
with anger and calling out in rapid succession, "You're a traitor,
Cleaver!"

As I remember, Cleaver began his speech by defending the conservative
American values of self-reliance and entrepreneurship and warning
against the dangers of statism and collectivism. Shortly into his
speech, however, as the heckling reached intolerable levels, dozens of
protesters began marching down the aisles of the auditorium, headed
for the stage.

Sitting near the podium, I turned to watch as some of the marchers
leaped onto the stage, dragging a giant American flag that had been
squeezed into a thick noose. After they swatted the stage several
times with Old Glory, I remember them stomping the flag with their
boots and accompanying the chaos with an eerie chant of some kind.

Cleaver stood above me only a few rows away, sizing up the anarchy as
it unfolded around him. What I'll never forget is the kind of smooth
composure this larger-than-life figure displayed despite the impending
threat -- like a panther, as one protester would soon learn to his
dismay.

Realizing the inaction or disappearance of the campus police, the
apparent ringleader of the mob raced over to a table near the podium,
grabbed a pitcher of water, and splashed its contents over Cleaver's
face and chest. With the reflexes of an experienced prizefighter,
Cleaver knocked the angry young man clear off the stage with a simple
but frightfully quick jab, and then he waited calmly for more.

While the leftist thugs rioting near Cleaver had second thoughts about
their next move, the campus police finally arrived and cleared the
stage after a short scuffle. Cleaver continued speaking, but I was so
overwhelmed by the rapid succession of violent events that my memory
even now leaves me somewhat helpless beyond that point.

Several years later, Cleaver met with the editors of Reason Magazine
for a profound, enlightening, and at times rather poignant interview
about recent American history, the dangers of welfare-statism, the
role of ideology in politics, and what he learned while living under
socialist rule abroad.

http://reason.com/archives/1986/02/0...h-eldridge-cle

Cleaver learned that most importantly, "it is a quality of human
beings that when they are trying to tear something down[,] they don't
pay enough attention" to the relationship between ideology and "the
form of government that comes out of that ideology." Having studied
Marxism "on paper" as a Black Panther, Cleaver was ill-prepared to
realize how efficiently the state manages to crush the very individual
Cleaver himself had intended to liberate.

When asked by the Reason editors whether government welfare programs
end up harming or helping its recipients, Cleaver had this to say:

My life, I think, spans the whole era of the welfare state. I was born
in 1935. I remember when people were ashamed to be on welfare and
receive state aid and all that, but we developed a situation where
black people to a large degree and a lot of other groups such as
elderly people, children, and a lot of poor white people ended being
harnessed by political forces, especially the Democratic Party. In
return for the federal appropriations that we are now dependent upon,
our leaders were obligated to get out the black vote for the
Democratic Party. So this put us in a negative relationship with the
economic system. We were dependent upon the federal budget -- a very
precarious situation, because when the political winds change, we get
our living cut off.

Cleaver believed that the solution to this kind of dependency on the
Democratic Party is a series of private-sector entities that help
bring these groups into a more positive relationship with the economic
system:

If we do it through the state, like, say, President Roosevelt did with
the New Deal, you augment the power of the state. ... I don't want to
see government get control of the economic system as a whole and the
livelihood of all the people, because I have seen that, and it's a no-
no.

Since Cleaver's "great, burning desire" was to "help enlarge human
freedom," he was able to recognize the debilitating effects that
Democrat welfare-statism had on the black population here at home.

Eldridge Cleaver passed away in 1998, but today, writers like Colbert
King are likening Americans who are simply alarmed, as Cleaver was, at
the growth of Big Brother to the racists, bigots, and murderers who
stood in the way of civil rights legislation. This is a deplorable and
disingenuous charge, since the Tea Party phenomenon is simply aimed at
thwarting the rapid augmentation of the state, not at any of the civil
rights legislation.

As Eldridge Cleaver understood, when the individual is crushed, so is
his sense of self-respect and self-reliance. Since LBJ's Great Society
initiatives, billions of dollars have been spent augmenting the state
in relation to the individual lives of most black Americans. Is
Colbert King happy with the results? Is socialized medicine as
important to the black community as the staggering numbers of children
who grow up without a father in the home?

Back in 1947, Mahatma Gandhi was asked a question about the prospect
of a state-controlled economy in newly independent India. Gandhi
replied:

I look upon an increase of the power of the state with the greatest
fear, because although while apparently doing good by minimizing
exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying
individuality, which lies at the root of all progress. We know of so
many cases where men have adopted trusteeship [charity], but none
where the State has really lived for the poor.

It is the "fear of freedom and responsibility," said Tzvetan Todorov,
that creates "the attraction of a totalitarian system."

Listen to the panther, Colbert King. If you think you're on the right
side of history, then Eldridge Cleaver may have already seen your
future.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/...e_panther.html