Saturday, July 12, 2014

The 50th Anniversary of Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society

Portrait of President Lyndon B. Johnson Deutsc...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It has been over fifty years since the assassination of America's thirty-fifth President, John F. Kennedy and the swearing in of his Vice President, Lyndon Baines Johnson to become America's thirty-sixth President. That means it is also the 50th anniversary of the Great Society Reforms that L.B.J. ushered in. Did you ever wonder why the great majority of African-Americans are Democrats today? They weren’t always you know. It was after all Southern Democrats who enslaved many of their grandparents and great grandparents. That was just a few short generations ago. Southern Democrats owned the majority of slaves in America, and after the Civil War those same Southern Democrats also enforced the strict segregation policies of the Deep South known as “Jim Crow” which many of today's African-American's parents and grandparents had to live under. It was these same Southern Democrats that owned slaves prior to the Civil War who also believed in segregation and continued to practice racial discrimination long after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed into law. So just how did it come to pass that most of today's descendants of freed slaves belong to the same political Party whose former leaders and members once enslaved their grandparents and great grandparents and later resorted to wearing white hoods to shield their true identities. The answer to this very important question should prove quite fascinating.

Fifty years ago Lyndon Baines Johnson declared war on poverty in America. In retrospect many of the so called “Great Society” reforms that began in 1963 under his administration have been unmitigated disasters. Head Start, Food Stamps, and the Immigration Act of 1965 are government entitlement programs that all began during the Johnson Administration and they have all had the unflinching support of the NAACP. All of the hype surrounding these government assistance programs not withstanding they have not enabled a single American to work their way out of poverty or to become a more productive member of our society. They have all been total failures in that regard. They have only served to enable millions of under-privileged Americans to become progressively more and more dependent on the Federal Government while at the same time destroying their personal sense of self-esteem and whatever traditional values they originally had that form the basis for a solid family life. If you don’t believe me just take a good, long look at the condition of the nuclear Black family in America’s inner cities today. This is in spite of everything that Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic Party, and the NAACP have tried to do. They have failed unquestionably.

There are hundreds of thousands of unwed African-American mothers living on welfare, many of them bearing the children of casual sexual encounters with several different men. There are a growing number of single parent homes headed up by Black women because too many Black men are justly locked up in jail and absent from their children’s lives. Thus many Black children are growing up today without any positive adult role models in their lives.

Read more here:
The 50th Anniversary of Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society - President by Mistake or Just a President who made Mistakes?

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