Leonard Pitts The Miami Herald

August 25, 2010

Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693

RE: “This is who ‘we’ really is, Glenn” – Some comments on your column on the audacity of Glenn Beck to hope that his rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial would be thought of as something good. I can’t believe that your bitch slapping of grammar signals that you want to be appointed head Ebonics instructor at the DEA.

Mr. Pitts,

My father’s father had 2 uncles who came from Ireland to fight in the Civil War. Both fought at Gettysburg. One of them is still there “wrapped in faded coat of Blue”.

One hundred and one years later, standing on the steps in front of the Essex County Courthouse, I was hit upside the head by a Newark policeman. I suppose we were both doing our duty. Mine was to “speak freely”; his was to keep a sort of peace.

Should there be some sort of slave reparations bill I hope to use former as a carry forward tax credit to apply to my share of the bill. I use the latter to remind myself that the “content of one’s character” is judged in many ways.

You could say the above is extremely self serving. If you did you would be right. Then again “some things are owed to the ledger”.

You say that “social conservatives opposed the freedom movement of the 20th century”.

If we are to believe Mr. Justice Marshall the most racist, the most bigoted of the 20th century’s “social conservatives” was Woodrow Wilson. Can I add without being painted with the scarlet “R” that Thurgood Marshall was the best trial lawyer and worst Justice to serve on the Supreme Court in the 20th century?

An exception to the rule of “de morituis nihil nisi bonum” must be made in the case of the recently deceased Exalted Kleagle Senator Robert Byrd [D-WV]

Using your criteria those two, Wilson and Byrd, would be proud members of the “social conservative” cabal of which you speak so intensely. They were something else too. Both men sought to use the power of the Federal government to advance their causes. Wilson’s was One World. Byrd’s was One White World. Some would describe the Palmer Raids as an example of tyranny wearing the cloak of the law. The cloak of the law is what modern American Liberals love to wear, particularly when they lack the support of the people in a scheme predicated on defying gravity.
Beck’s “right”, the same as Marian Anderson’s “right”, comes from what “social conservatives” call Natural Law. Those rights are ours “from beyond the stars”. That concept is both alien and anathema to modern American Liberals. It is one that is embraced by people who know that “socialism, communism, and tyranny” are synonymous.

Margaret Thatcher said that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. T.S. Eliot, a Nobel Prize winner back when it meant something, said that the trouble with socialism is that it is a futile attempt to design a system so perfect that no one will have to be good.

Glenn Beck will try to attract people to the Lincoln Memorial “to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances”. Prime among the many grievances is a government intent on “sending forth swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance”. He says the answer lies not in a court system subject to the whims of the majority party but rather in the hearts of man.

I rather imagine that Saul Alinsky and his acolytes would have a hard time trying to digest that.


Kevin Smith



PS – You say that Beck’s using the Lincoln Memorial as a backdrop for his rally is
“worse than nonsensical, worse than mendacious, worse than shameless”. It is “obscene”.
Would not Logic dictate that Pitts’ Rules would put you in the forefront of the fight against the mosque at Ground Zero, the WTC? Alas, it is deuced difficult for modern American Liberals, a group that marches under a banner that is plaid, a group famous for their “eclectic indignation”, to grasp the obvious.