BLT - Marxism by another name

[stephanie]

links in article.

By Josh Painter Posted in 2008 — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
BLT is not your grandmother's sandwich anymore. I'm not talking about the famous bacon, lettuce and tomato taste treat here, but Black Liberation Theology. Thanks to pastor emeritus Jeremiah Wright of Barrick Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ, a new light has been focused on BLT, pushing it from the shadows into the forefront of political and religious discussion in America. So what is BLT, and where did it come from?

Black Liberation Theology is a fairly recent phenomenum, as far as religions go. It is, in fact, more radical politics than religion. BLT orginated in the 1960s when James Cone and other black liberation advocates began teaching that Christ was a black man:

Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.

Cone and the others essentially borrowed Jesus from Christian theology and mixed the Savior and Karl Marx together into not a sandwich, but a new tossed salad of religion and politics. For Cone, traditional Christianity was nothing more than just another "opiate of the masses." And Marxism had in its early days been the exclusive realm of "racist whites." But Cone discovered Liberation Theology in Latin America and realized that black theology and Marxist politics could be presented as being fully compatible. The oil that blends the two is the culture of victimism. According to Cone:

read the rest.
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/josh_painter/2008/mar/21/blt_marxism_by_another_name

[diuretic]

Poor old Karl, the things that people do. No wonder, towards the end of his life he looked around at what was happening in the European left and said, if that's Marxism, then I'm not a Marxist - something like that anyway.

This is a load of old tosh.

[middleground]

Anytime a politician addresses populist issues they get tagged as a socialist. Introducing Wrights philosophy into the campaign is just a way to unleash the communist boogieman into the election rhetoric. Given that most of the Democrats positions are the same, and mostly populist, this is a non-story that will likely take on a life of its own. This could very well be the elections version of the swiftboat attack. It wont be rooted in any reality, but it might be damaging enough to turn off lazier voters at least I'm sure thats the hope.

This country has a history of class conflict between populist and aristocrats so this is nothing new. Some will try to dress it up as un-American, but actually nothing is more american than this conflict. Ever since the beginning of industrialization it has been a prominent issue, and even before that if you care to include things like Shay's rebellion as a populist movement.

Its not really an issue of whether the philosophy is American or not. Whats American is the idea of self government. If, for whatever circumstances, the populists factions unite enough to gain a solid political force, we will see the country move in a more "socialist" direction. So long as it happens through the mechanism laid out in the Constitution and doesn't trample the bill of rights, there is nothing un-American about it.

I expect that the republicans will use this as a issue to split up the populist factions by trying to characterize it as a "black" movement hoping to create a racial divide ... as usual. Poor people are suckers for that type of thing. Of course, it will be BS, but that doesn't mean it wont happen.