Past or Future?
Well known leftist Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson says that vote next week is a vote for the future– Obama – or a vote for the past – Romney. Meyerson indicates that a Romney wind will only slow down the inevitable. One factor he cites is that the nation is growing “more racially diverse (or, more bluntly, less white) each year.” See Post Opinion
Concerning the past-future divide, I believe Meyerson is wrong on many levels. Regarding his perceived racial divide, I offer this: Before the leftists in this country decided they could create an advantage by divide and conquer politics, The only racial classifications in this country were black and white (or Caucasian and Negro, or whatever, if you will). That was wrong to begin with, but was a legacy of slavery that should have been put behind the country nearly a century and a half ago. As a mater of fact, “Hispanics” were classified as “white” previously, as were all non blacks. To be sure, there was social discrimination, as there was with other immigrant ethnic groups, but no legal segregation as there was with blacks. The Irish, Italians, Poles, and especially the Jews, all overcame that without the help of a Civil Rights Act or the EEOC. Certainly, the so-called Hispanics can too, to the extent it really exists.
Actually, Meyerson is wrong about the nation becoming “less white.” Officialdom still uses the infamous “one-drop rule” more formally, hypo-descent, and insists that a mixed race child is black, rather than “white” or even mixed. Get ride of that rule, and the nation is actually becoming more white.
As far as voters in younger age groups being more apt to favor Obama, Meyerson is assuming they stay enamored with the left as the age. That is generally not true. Winston Churchill’s observation that if one is not a liberal at age 20 he has no heart — if he’s still one at 40, he has no brain, is also generally true.
