A Congressman Takes Cheap Shots at Thomas DiLorenzo
Friday, February 11, 2011
Ha! Here’s more fallout from Rep. Lacy Clay’s snarky comments about Dr. Thomas Lorenzo and the League of the South, published in the Economic Policy Journal:
Clay attacks DiLorenzo for being affiliated with the League of the South. As best I can tell from the web site, the League is a group of southerners Fed up with big government, who want to be left alone. They don’t want to have to use Federal Reserve currency, they don’t want to be told what to do by those in Washington D.C. or by northerners.
Now it is really rich that Clay objects to this. Clay is member of the Congressional Black Caucus. When Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee, a white man, attempted to join the Black Caucus, because he represented a predominately black district in Memphis, Clay objected.
Clay said on the matter after Cohen was rejected for membership:
Mr. Cohen asked for admission, and he got his answer. He’s white and the Caucus is black. It’s time to move on. We have racial policies to pursue and we are pursuing them, as Mr. Cohen has learned. It’s an unwritten rule. It’s understood…He does not, and cannot, meet the membership criteria, unless he can change his skin color. Primarily, we are concerned with the needs and concerns of the black population, and we will not allow white America to infringe on those objectives.
Yikes! Sounds like Clay understands the desire not to be told what to do by outsiders, after all.
Does the Black Caucus have the right of free association? If so, that means it has the right to discriminate, using whatever criteria for admission that it may see fit.
And if the Congressional Black Caucus has that right, do others?
On the Web: http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2011/02/congressman-takes-cheap-shots-at-thomas.html