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| New York Governor Andrew Cuomo |
The recent celebration of the late Martin Luther King Jr. was a chance for everyone to remember the great struggle for equality and human decency, and the great humanitarian ideals of the Civil Rights Movement embodied by the late MLK. In some ways, my family and I have also benefited from the struggles of those that sacrificed so much during the Civil Rights Era. I will always consider MLK to be a legitimate hero, because he struggled for an admirable and worthwhile goal, human decency and the equality of opportunity which is owed to all people. He ultimately sacrificed his life to those that could not accept his message of decency and respect.
Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York, used the recent celebration of MLK to attack his political opponents. His language reflects the false stereotypes and petty Socialist diatribes found within the Progressive extreme Left wing of the Democrat Party. His complaint was that conservatives are racists, because they oppose the Socialist ideals favored by Progressives: income redistribution; welfare programs; and tougher immigration policies.
The diversity-challenged Trump administration has pursued policies that are the opposite of what King supported -- from their explicit efforts to roll back voting rights, tax cuts that exacerbate income inequality, proposed cuts to social programs like food stamps, a possible rollback of nondiscrimination regulations for housing, crackdowns on nonwhite immigration and asylum seekers, pursuing policies that rein-in public sector unions while earning the praise of white nationalist groups. And that's just a partial list. It's a reminder that despite all the change we've seen over the past half-century, the underlying fights are not over.It is clearly evident, Governor Cuomo's complaints have little to do with racial or legal equality, and everything to do with economic equality. He uses the same tired old stereotypes and specious accusations of racism against the Trump administration that have been used against everyone that falls afoul of the extreme Left wing of the Democrat party. The equality sought by MLK and the other heroes of the Civil Rights era was for an equality before the law, an equality of opportunity, an equality for each person to be allowed to reach their fullest potential, an equality that is based on mutual respect and understanding. Those icons of the Civil Rights Era never spoke of a government imposed economic equality, nor did they ever demand that one group be penalized in order for another group to succeed.
I am not a Trump supporter, but I would be immediately included in the Governor's diatribe, because of my own opposition to the Socialism that is so highly favored by the misguided liberal elite. The Governor may get plenty of press time, and his misguided and misinformed opinions may be printed by his cronies at CNN and the rest of the mainstream press, but that does not make his message any better. He has a history of attacking members of his own party, if they happen to get in his way. Andrew Cuomo is simply one more cheap and opportunistic politician that uses his position to lash out at his opponents in order to further his own political future.