NRA and Black History (Don Lemon Fact-Checked)

This is with a hat-tip to:

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy traveled over to CNN This Morning on Wednesday to discuss his campaign. During the part of the interview about his recent speech at the NRA convention, host Don Lemon told Ramaswamy that it was “insulting” he would dare to say that black Americans enjoy equal rights.

(The longer video can be watched HERE)

NEWSBUSTERS has this:

….As Ramaswamy started to explain himself, Lemon repeated himself, “Okay, but that wasn’t fought for black people to have guns. I think—”

Again, Ramaswamy started to defend himself, “black people did not get to enjoy the other freedoms until their Second Amendment rights were secured and I think that that’s one of the lessons—”

Lemon was not happy with that explanation and started to shift the conversation away from guns to about race more generally, “But black people still aren’t allowed to enjoy the freedoms.”

After Ramaswamy told Lemon he disagreed and was “doing a disservice to our country” with those remarks, Lemon essentially told Ramaswamy to shut up, “when you are in black skin and you live in this country then you can disagree with me.”

Ramaswamy then called Lemon out for trying to use race to silence his critics and argued “Black Americans absolutely have equal rights in this country.”

Lemon replied, “I think it’s insulting to black people, it’s insulting to me as an African-American. I don’t want to sit here and argue with you because it’s infuriating for you to put those things together. It’s not right, your telling of history is wrong.”

After Ramaswamy asked what he got wrong, Lemon returned to the straw man, “you’re making people think the Civil War was fought for black people—only for black people to get guns and for black people to have—”

[RPT BREAK]

This is a common thing I have found in Left’s and Atheist’s response to things they will say that the point you are making IS THE point of the of the discussion. So in this instance Don Lemon is saying Ramaswamy is saying that the Civil War was fought [only] to secure gun rights for black Americans. That that is it.

That is a straw man.

The Civil War was fought to secure Constitutional rights for black Americans.

SEE: What Was the Civil War Over?

I am gonna take another break within the break to give another example of how deterministic the Left thinks. This comes from my many years old post that grew beyond the debate I had with a professor of history at Michigan State U. We were told over-and-over-and-over again that THE REASON we entered Iraq was for WMDs. That is a rewriting of history.

[break-in-break]

Reasons for Entering Iraq

This next portion is taken from a series I do in responding to a local writer in a small journal. The original post is entitled, Concepts: Are We Insane? Nope, Just You Van Huizum.

U.N Resolutions

Yet another unfounded swipe at the Iraq War. John Van Huizum lives in a bubble where if he has come to a conclusion years ago… that’s it! History forever stays right where John wants it to stay. Here is an excerpt of John’s (click to enlarge it) article shows a complete lack of history.

I doubt he think any differently about Vietnam based on his 1970’s conclusions. It wouldn’t matter that after 1990 — the fall of the Wall — 100,000 of thousands of Soviet era documents were now being translated and reviewed by military historians and good books based on MORE historical documents. Because these new documents support the traditional (and not the Left’s reasoning) for entering and fighting this proxy war of WWIII (the Cold War), this new information is rejected from the matrix of the left’s consciousness. But that is neither here-nor-there.

So, let’s deal with some of the contentions in John’s excerpted article. Firstly he notes that there were insufficient reasons for going to war.

May I remind him there were many U.N. Resolutions against Iraq that were almost all not met:

  1. UNSCR 678 – November 29, 1990
  2. UNSCR 686 – March 2, 1991
  3. UNSCR 687 – April 3, 1991
  4. UNSCR 688 – April 5, 1991
  5. UNSCR 707 – August 15, 1991
  6. UNSCR 715 – October 11, 1991
  7. UNSCR 949 – October 15, 1994
  8. UNSCR 1051 – March 27, 1996
  9. UNSCR 1060 – June 12, 1996
  10. UNSCR 1115 – June 21, 1997
  11. UNSCR 1134 – October 23, 1997
  12. UNSCR 1137 – November 12, 1997
  13. UNSCR 1154 – March 2, 1998
  14. UNSCR 1194 – September 9, 1998 (“Condemns the decision by Iraq of 5 August 1998 to suspend cooperation with” UN and IAEA inspectors, which constitutes “a totally unacceptable contravention” of its obligations under UNSCR 687, 707, 715, 1060, 1115, and 1154.)
  15. UNSCR 1205 – November 5, 1998
  16. UNSCR 1284 – December 17, 1999

….See Additional UN Security Council Statements…

Official U.N. resolutions aside, Bush went to Congress and made his case with these and many other points. One point being that Iraq was firing almost everyday on our fighter pilots in the no-fly zone. In the cease fire of the First Gulf War, this was enough — under international law — to RESUME aggression….

…read it all…

So you see, the reasons of going in were many. But the Left is so tunnel visioned that this is why they often lose in any conversation they stay in over 2-minutes.

[break-in-break over]

The War was for applying many principles of rights to and for blacks while trying to unite the country, namely freedom. And an important aspect of this is the 2nd Amendment.

The Reconstruction era was mutated under Democrats.

  • The period immediately following the Civil War (1865 -1877) is known as Reconstruction. Its promising name belies what turned out to be the greatest missed opportunity in American history. Where did we go wrong? And who was responsible? Renowned American history professor Allen Guelzo has the surprising answers in this eye-opening video.

MORE EXAMPLES

Slavery

The Third Force Act, also known as the KKK or the Civil Rights Act of 1871, empowered President Ulysses S. Grant to use the armed forces to combat those who conspired to deny equal protection of the laws and, if necessary, to suspend habeas corpus to enforce the act. Grant signed the legislation on this day in 1871. After the act’s passage, the president for the first time had the power to suppress state disorders on his own initiative and suspend the right of habeas corpus. Grant did not hesitate to use this authority. (POLITICO)

Terrorist Arm of the Democrats

The above links are from my PAGE about America’s racial history

[RPT BREAK OVER]

Later in the argument, Lemon burned a second straw man, accusing Ramaswamy of ignorning Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement. Ramaswamy never discounted those things, CNN even played a clip of him invoking Lyndon Johnson, but narrowing in on gun rights, Ramaswamy portrayed the NRA as a civil rights organization, “And you know how they got it? They got their Second Amendment rights, and they actually got the NRA played a big role in that, but today Don—”

Clearly not paying attention, Lemon shot back, “The NRA did not play a big role in that. That is a lie. That’s a lie. That’s not—the NRA did not play a big role in that.”

Going back again to race generally, Ramaswamy added “The part that I find insulting is when you say today, black Americans don’t have those rights after we have gone through Civil Rights Revolution in this country—”

Not happy with that, Lemon claimed it was Ramaswamy who was being insulting, “you are here sitting here telling an African-American about the rights and what you find insulting about the way I lived the skin I live in every day and I know the freedoms that black and white—that black people don’t have in this country and that black people do have.”

After Ramaswamy again called him out for trying to silence people, Lemon absurdly claimed he wasn’t, “I’m not saying you should express your views; but I think it’s insulting you’re sitting here—you’re sitting here, whatever ethnicity you are, splaining to me about what it is like to be black in America. I’m sorry.”

That led to Ramaswamy being the most agitated he got during the interview, “Whatever ethnicity I am? I’ll tell you what I am, I’m an Indian-American, I’m proud of it, but I think we should have this debate. Black, white, doesn’t matter on the content of the ideas.”

If the partisan labels on that question were reversed, it would be considered racist which is not surprising for the host who is always putting his foot in his mouth.

NRA

As for the NRA… even the modern Civil-Rights Movement were connected closely to their 2nd Amendment rights.

  • Negroes With Guns: The Untold History of Black NRA Gun Clubs and the Civil Rights Movement (LIBERTARIAN INSTITUTE)

Race, the Second Amendment and the NRA | NOIR Season 7 Episode 2

Black NRA Supporter Confronts STUPID Kids Against Guns at March for Our Lives (Full Show)

Reparations – Who Should Pay

The Reparations Movement — a government payout to descendants of slaves — is making a comeback. Super Bowl star Burgess Owens, who happens to be black and whose great grandfather was a slave, finds this movement both condescending and counterproductive. He wants no part of it. In this video, he explains why.

(Originally posted in 2019 – some updated links and media)

Mark Levin starts his show by reading from a 2004 article written by the Rev. Wayne Perryman entitled, “The Racist History of the Democratic Party.” It is also summed up in these three links, one to my VIMEO, and the others to my site (w/lots of media):

  • The Rev. Wayne Perryman On Democratic Racism (RUMBLE);
  • Did The Party’s Switch? (RPT);
  • Slavery Made the South Poor, Not Rich (RPT).

IF the narrative is pushed that reparations are to be given, it should be emphasized that one Party should repay them.

Here is a partial excerpt of the Wayne Perryman article Mark Levin was reading from

The Racist History of the Democratic Party

Most people are either a Democrat by design, or a Democrat by deception. That is either they were well aware the racist history of the Democrat Party and still chose to be Democrat, or they were deceived into thinking that the Democratic Party is a party that sincerely cared about Black people.

History reveals that every piece of racist legislation that was ever passed and every racist terrorist attack that was ever inflicted on African Americans, was initiated by the members of the Democratic Party. From the formation of the Democratic Party in 1792 to the Civil Rights movement of 1960’s, Congressional records show the Democrat Party passed no specific laws to help Blacks, every law that they introduced into Congress was designed to hurt blacks in 1894 Repeal Act. The chronicles of history shows that during the past 160 years the Democratic Party legislated Jim Crows laws, Black Codes and a multitude of other laws at the state and federal level to deny African Americans their rights as citizens.

History reveals that the Republican Party was formed in 1854 to abolish slavery and challenge other racist legislative acts initiated by the Democratic Party.

Some called it the Civil War, others called it the War Between the States, but to the African Americans at that time, it was the War Between the Democrats and the Republicans over slavery. The Democrats gave their lives to expand it, Republican gave their lives to ban it.

During the Senate debates on the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, it was revealed that members of the Democratic Party formed many terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan to murder and intimidate African Americans voters. The Ku Klux Klan Act was a bill introduced by a Republican Congress to stop Klan Activities. Senate debates revealed that the Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.

History reveals that Democrats lynched, burned, mutilated and murdered thousands of blacks and completely destroyed entire towns and communities occupied by middle class Blacks, including Rosewood, Florida, the Greenwood District in Tulsa Oklahoma, and Wilmington, North Carolina to name a few.

After the Civil War, Democrats murdered several hundred black elected officials (in the South) to regain control of the southern government. All of the elected officials up to 1935 were Republicans. As of 2004, the Democrat Party (the oldest political party in America) has never elected a black man to the United States Senate, the Republicans have elected three.

History reveals that it was Thaddeus Stevens, a Radical Republican that introduced legislation to give African Americans the so-called 40 acres and a mule and Democrats overwhelmingly voted against the bill. Today many white Democrats are opposed to paying African Americans trillions of dollars in Reparation Pay, money that should be paid by the Democratic Party.

History reveals that it was Abolitionists and Radical Republicans such as Henry L. Morehouse and General Oliver Howard that started many of the traditional Black colleges, while Democrats fought to keep them closed. Many of our traditional Black colleges are named after white Republicans.

Congressional records show it was Democrats that strongly opposed the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. These three Amendments were introduced by Republicans to abolish slavery, give citizenship to all African Americans born in the United States and, give Blacks the right to vote.

Congressional records show that Democrats were opposed to passing the following laws that were introduced by Republicans to achieve civil rights for African Americans:

  • Civil Rights Act 1866
  • Reconstruction Act of 1867
  • Freedman Bureau Extension Act of 1866
  • Enforcement Act of 1870
  • Force Act of 1871
  • Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871
  • Civil Rights Act of 1875
  • Civil Rights Act of 1957
  • Civil Rights Act of 1960

And during the 60’s many Democrats fought hard to defeat the

  • 1964 Civil Rights Act
  • 1965 Voting Rights Acts
  • 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act

Court records shows that it was the Democrats that supported the Dred Scott Decision. The decision classified Blacks and property rather than people. It was also the racist Jim Crow practices initiated by Democrats that brought about the two landmark cases of Plessy v Ferguson and Brown v. The Board of Education….

(READ IT ALL)

WAYNE PERRYMAN!

Yeonmi Park: My Terrifying Escape from North Korea (#Merica)

  • I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea and that I escaped from North Korea. Both of these events shaped me, and I would not trade them for an ordinary and peaceful life. Yeonmi Park

UPDATED VIDEO INTERVIEW: exactly one year from original posting

Yeonmi Park, North Korea defector and author on her defection from North Korea and how Columbia University has echoes of her past on ‘Kudlow.’

  • Kudlow: “somehow God was looking after you”
  • Park: “Yes”
  • Kudlow: “Really.”
  • Park: “He did.”
  • Kudlow: And, it’s a great story” [….] “It’s a blessing you made it through.”

Amen. (Concordia has a good posting on Yeonmi)

One commenter on the Fox Business’ YT channel says it all:

  • I feel so embarrassed for our country when a foreign warrior comes here for freedom and still can’t escape the war.

Her accent is hard to follow, but you get a rhythm going as you listen to understand here | GOD and North korea – Why the North Korean Christians Face the Most Extreme Persecution” (YouTube). She mentions the “real God” in the video speaking of the Judeo-Christian faith.

ORIGINAL POSTING

Born in North Korea, Yeonmi Park shares her harrowing journey to escape the hunger, thought control, and violence she experienced living under authoritarian regimes. Grateful to have found acceptance and justice in the United States, she cautions Americans to see the early warning signs—here in America—of the communist nightmares she fled in North Korea and China.

“The Woman King” Might Not Be What You Think | Larry Elder

Hollywood Lies vs History Truth: Movie “The Woman King” Might Not Be What You Think

Here’s the trailer for the movie “The Woman King” starring Viola Davis, supposedly “based on true powerful events.” Really?

The plot as described in IMDb:

  • “A historical epic inspired by true events that took place in The Kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful states of Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries.”

How historical?

Critic Robert Daniels, who mostly praised the film said: “You might wonder how (Director Gina Prince-Bythewood can shape a tale centering the Agojie warriors—an all-woman group of soldiers sworn to honor and sisterhood—hailing from the West African kingdom of Dahomey, when one considers their hand in perpetuating the transatlantic slave trade.”

Other reviews were more blunt about the historical inaccuracies, such as there was, in fact, a band of warrior women in Africa called the Dahomey. And they were fierce, feared and frequently bloodthirsty fighters. But they used that ferocity to kill and conquer other Africans for sale to slave traders. Indeed, the trans Atlantic and the Arab African slave could not have occurred without the complicity of African chiefs who sold conquered Africans do European an Arab slavers.

A review called The Woman King Historical Embarrassment puts it this way: “The movie has been set-up as a having a historical basis, telling the story of the real-life Kingdom of Dahomey in the 18th and 19th centuries…. In reality, Dahomey was a notorious slave kingdom, and not the Pan-African freedom fighters as the movie presents them. They enslaved and murdered hundreds of thousands from other tribes and sold them into the slave trade. Dahomey was renowned as the “Black Sparta,” and was a fiercely militaristic society bent on domination and conquest. Their soldiers struck fear into other tribes all along what is still known as the Slave Coast, as they captured tribespeople from enemy tribes and sold them as slaves.”

In the film, white slavers are the enemy when, in reality, they were business partners with the “women kings.”

The “Historical Embarrassment” review continues:

“Even worse for those who struggle with reality, the Amazons were formed from among the king’s “third class” wives. These were those considered insufficiently beautiful to share his bed and who had not borne children. Awkward!”

“History Vs. Hollywood” writes: “… in real life, the Dahomey are much more the villains than the heroes….The Kingdom of Dahomey was a bloodthirsty society bent on conquest. They conquered neighboring African states and took their citizens as slaves, selling many in the Atlantic slave trade in exchange for items like rifles, tobacco, and alcohol. Many of the slaves they sold ended up in America… There are accounts of Dahomey warriors conducting slave raids on villages where they cut the heads off of the elderly and rip the bottom jaw bones off others. During the raids, they’d burn the villages to the ground. Those who they let live, including the children, were taken captive, and sold as slaves.”

The truth is, as in my written testimony before a congressional committee considering reparations is as follows: Slavery, sadly, has been part of human history since the beginning. Muslim slave traders took whites out of the Mediterranean area and enslaved them in Northern Africa. European slavers took blacks out of Africa and shipped them to the New World. Europeans enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved Asians. Africans enslaved Africans. Even native Americans enslaved other Native Americans…

“The Arab slave trade took more blacks out of Africa (for a time) and for a longer period of time then did the European slavers. In “Prisons & Slavery,” John Dewar Gleissner writes: “The Arabs’ treatment of black Africans can aptly be termed an African Holocaust. Arabs killed more Africans in transit, especially when crossing the Sahara Desert, than Europeans and Americans, and over more centuries, both before and after the years of the Atlantic slave trade. … African slaves transported by Arabs across the Sahara Desert died more often than slaves making the Middle Passage to the New World by ship.”

CNN’s Don Lemon Get Bitched Slapped By History

Don Lemon attempts to argue that the British royal family should pay reparations, and gets a quick history lesson. Don Lemon says she should come back for more discussion  on this. Lol. That’s the last time she will be on.

Frederick Douglass: From Slave to Statesman (Updated)

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, but through his own heroic efforts became one of the most influential advocates for freedom in American history. His journey, a tale both agonizing and inspiring, should be known by everyone. Timothy Sandefur, author of “Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man,” guides us through Douglass’ amazing life.

I spoke with the owners of the video that I grabbed this clip from. They were kind enough to allow this to stay up — HOWEVER — if you enjoyed this clip, please visit and consider subscribing to EncourageTV. The channel is built with positive, wholesome, and religious viewership in mind. (Which is better than the drivel we get elsewhere.)

(REALLY this is young Douglas vs. old Douglass, Kaepernick merely takes him out of a lifetime of thought)

Kaepernick quoted Frederick Douglas in “bashing” July 4th. FIRST, Ted Cruz does a bang-up job in responding to this here (DAILY WIRE). But the mistake I see here (#TWO) is that people evolve.

Let me explain.

I have heard many people over the years quote St. Augustine to support their understanding of a Church Father supporting old-earth creationism (OEC). But in fact, as Augustine matured in his faith and thought about the competing worldviews (remember, he was a Pagan before being Born Again) he became a solid young earth creationist (YEC). So the quote people choose pre-dates his ending up as a YEC’er. In other words, as he moved further away from his Pagan roots he came closer to God’s clear work. (See my post entitled “Taking Physicist Stephen Barr to Task Over St. Augustine“)

The same applies here, Douglas was newly freed, he fell into being tutored by someone who viewed the Constitution as a “slave document, but after spreading his wings further, reading the Constitution (and the Civil War) — he matured to believe the Constitution was an anti-slavery document.

The book pictured and I highly recommend is this: “Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White“. There is a DVD as well.

See as well my page on my site with many resource recommendations on various topics: “U.S. RACIAL HISTORY

Are America’s Founding Documents “Racist”? (Biden Admin. VS. History)

There is just no way to really get across the years of reading on this topic in an audio or video form to respond to the bigotry and rewriting of history found in the Biden Administration. But I try with this somewhat long video. FIRST however, an article I suggest one read if a fan of Thomas Sowell is this one in the only political journal of note, THE CITY JOURNAL:

  • THE NONCONFORMIST: Over a lifetime of scholarship and public engagement, economist Thomas Sowell has illuminated controversial topics such as race, poverty, and culture.

I likewise use video from WALLBUILDERS creations, as well as video from the following Thomas Sowell channels on YouTube:

This video likewise compliments my previous posts:

House Judiciary Hearing on Reparations (Larry Elder – 5-Parts)

Larry Elder brought some facts to a place that is short on them. Here are the portions that include both Larry Elder, Burgess Owens, and Tom McClintock.

OPENING STATEMENT

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

Thomas Sowell DEBUNKS the Legacy of Slavery Argument

In this video Thomas Sowell quashes the legacy of slavery argument that liberals use to explain disparities between blacks and whites in the United States. He also shares his thoughts on giving reparations for descendants of slaves.

(Check out the 22 books Thomas Sowell highly recommends)

Slavery’s Twist of Fate (Larry Elder and Roger D. McGrath)

Some amazing discussion about the beginnings of slavery, as well as more information on indentured servitude and the first legal slave owner:

Slavery’s Ironic Twist of Fate,” By Roger D. McGrath

Instrumental in establishing slavery in Virginia was an African slave, later known as Anthony Johnson, who was sold in Jamestown as an indentured servant in 1621 to a tobacco farmer with the surname of Bennet. By that time, tobacco had become the highly profitable cash crop of the colony and tobacco farms had begun filling up the hinterland of Jamestown.  Johnson was one of the few on the Bennet farm who survived the Massacre of 1622, a surprise Indian attack on the farms surrounding Jamestown that left 347 colonists dead and mutilated. Johnson’s luck held, because the next year the Bennet farm had its first female indentured servant, an African called Mary, whom he married.

By the 1630s, Johnson was free of his indenture and, as was customary, received 50 acres of farmland from the colonial government. Soon he was selling crops of tobacco and importing indentured servants himself. For every servant he brought to Virginia he received 50 acres of land. By 1651, Johnson farmed 250 acres of land and had five indentured servants, four of them white and one black, a man named John Casor.

Claiming Johnson had kept him in servitude long beyond any term of indenture, Casor went to work for a neighboring farmer, Robert Parker. With Parker championing Casor’s cause the dispute went into the courts in 1654. Johnson argued that Casor had been sold in Africa as a slave and Johnson had bought him without Casor having signed a contract of indenture. Therefore, said Johnson, Casor was simply his property.

At first, the court rejected Johnson’s precedent-setting argument but, after an appeal in 1655 declared in Johnson’s favor, Casor was Johnson’s property and would remain so until Johnson sold him or freed him. There had been an indentured servant in Virginia sentenced to lifetime servitude as a punishment for a crime in 1641, but it was the Casor case that formally established the legal precedent for slavery. It is one of the ironies of history that a black African, Anthony Johnson, could be called the Father of American Slavery.

In 1661, the Virginia House of Burgesses, recognizing the Casor decision, enacted a statute that said any free person—white, black, or Indian—could own servants for life. This didn’t mean much to Indians who had practiced slavery for centuries anyway, but it did mean that the Indian tribes of the southeast would eventually own thousands of black slaves…..