The Human Freedom Index compiled by the Cato Institute provides a purely numerical approach to derive its conclusions on the most free and least free societies in the world. A compilation of 76 individual indicators of personal freedom and economic freedom provide an overall score for each country. It is a sign of the times that we have to announce that the United States is one of the most free societies in the world. One might believe otherwise if they only turned on the news or listened to Black Lives Matter.
There are vile people in an otherwise decent society that would have us all believe the United States is made up of a “basket of deplorables;” we are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic.” Do you trust your livelihood and safety to someone who despises you and your culture? Apparently over 60 million Americans did when they voted for Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party.
Bizarrely, despite our record on economic opportunity and uncharted freedoms for citizens and immigrants alike, the U.N. has recently declared that there needs to be a special session, at the request of many African nations, to debate the nature of racism and police brutality in the United States. For the record, every single African nation falls far or very far below that of the United States on there record of issues like racism and police brutality in the Freedom Index (including, one imagines, Eritrea, South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Western Sahara, and Somalia, countries that do not even qualify, presumably as a result of lack of basic governmental operations and control over real bad guys).
Why is it that the countries least plagued by racism, sexism, or any of the phobes are currently living through the most obscene struggles to end them?
The initial wave of both Civil Rights or Women’s Rights groups sought equal protection under the law - specifically highlighting the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to make their case; these documents were a “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir,” according to Martin Luther King, Jr. No sane or honest person would deny that America fell short in its promise. It was a legitimate struggle and one we celebrate as having been won.
The antiracist and feminist movements of today neither fight legitimate causes nor represent peoples’ best interests. They are simply Marxists fronts using blacks and women as pawns in their never-ending struggle for power. Make no mistake: These movements, and others like them, seek only to destroy what is good in the world. They seek to gain power for themselves, the limited few who steer the ship. The rest can suffer in squalor.
There is no shortage of information available about the lengths to which Marxist power-hungry, narcissistic “leaders” will go to ensure their dominance. One need only up a history book or perform a quick internet search to read about the hundreds of millions deprived of basic human rights, starved, imprisoned, tortured, and systematically murdered in the name of equality. The Democrat Party is well on its way to joining such ignominious ranks.
Lest one conjures up an excuse that this is just history, it becomes critical to note that there is no need to enter a time capsule to witness such atrocities. It is just as easy to cite modern benchmarks of the abject failures of Marxism. Venezuela, one of the most oil-rich countries in the world, has managed to condemn almost 80% of its entire population to poverty. Worse yet, it is estimated that almost half of all Venezuelans will suffer from “extreme poverty” by 2030, having to live off less than the international benchmark of $2 per day. The situation in North Korea should speak for itself.
For the sake of comparison, blacks in America had a median household income of $41,000 in 2018. Moreover, the average American identified as being “in poverty” by the Census Bureau has access to things the average Venezuelan could only dream about. Air conditioning and central heat, vehicles (43% of poor families have two or more cars and trucks), television, computer, tablets, and other technology (82% report having smartphones - I am dubious it is even that low), access to world-class health care, and not a single family self-reported that a member of their unit went hungry for even a day.
How is equality better if we are all equally miserable?
Nonetheless, the United States is reviled for its systemic oppression and racism. Save for the WASP, it is a racist wasteland and cultural gulag. To question this narrative is to expose your white fragility, even if you are not a white person saying it (like this or this). One is now even a racist for being non-racist, which means not antiracist enough.
It is simply insane that the average American feels inclined toward this dangerous and utterly fabricated belief system while ignoring the real history of leftist regimes. Tantamount insanity manifests in the notion that America is worse than anywhere else.
Wherever human suffering occurs, it should be addressed. The United States is not immune to human suffering, but it is patently untrue for activists to magnify the issue to the extent they have. In contrast to their positions, we contend that blacks, women, and especially our gay and transgender communities, in America are the freest and luckiest such subgroups in the world.
Slavery Around the Modern World
According to the Department of State, modern slavery can be defined as “the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud or coercion.” It is estimated that in the world there are close to 25-50 million slaves.
Sex trafficking accounts for most forms of modern slavery. An alarming statistic is that an estimated three-quarters of the tens of millions of trafficked people are women and girls. They are likely not being used for hard labor. If there is any version of slavery in the United States, Black Lives Matter is largely responsbile for the mischaracterization of the form it takes. Rather than claiming oppression of black lives, which are free and limited only by their own individual choices, we should be seeking to end the modern form of slavery that finds, transports, and uses vulnerable females for the purpose of perverse and immoral sexual gratification in the United States.
Still, modern slavery is not limited to sexual trafficking. Compelled labor is certainly not uncommon. In Mauritania, not exactly a white-majority nation, the practice was not officially outlawed until 1981, and still it was not illegal to own slaves until 2007. As recently as 2012, it was estimated that as much as 10-20% if its population was still enslaved.
By contrast, our society elevates blacks. Affirmative action programs for university and workforce acceptance actively promote the black community to life stations. Entire colleges systems are curated for just the black community, and increasingly all colleges are re-segregating dorms, graduations, and syllabi to accommodate black students specifically. Every major publicly-traded corporation and all government entities train (indoctrinate?) staff on their implicit bias, white privilege, and cultural responsiveness. If whiteness has inherent evil, blackness has inherent beauty and strength.
Understanding of others, through decency and tolerance, is a good thing. These concepts should be accepted as the pinnacle representation of a just society. Tolerance is a two-way street, though. How does one explain that a black conservative is no longer considered black by his peers? It would appear racial identity is more aligned with a political agenda. By extension, it stands to reason that these trainings (indoctrinations?) are more about realigning political values than race-conscious ones.
Women’s Rights Around the Modern World
Following the struggles to gain equal rights and protection under the law (suffrage, maternity leave, etc.) the feminist movement lost meaningful battles. But victories against all of the real problems only ensured a battle would eventually ensue over imagined ones. While the United States is home to more female representation in the workforce and political sphere than ever before, and even though women enjoy arguably more rights now than men (preferential hiring, child custody, etc.), the wave of marchers in January of 2017 would have led the world to believe Donald Trump was going to roll back access to reproductive rights, suffrage, and pantsuits.
Real societal oppression is occurring around the world, but the narrative from the entitled narcissists at home shout too deafeningly loud to allow for awareness to grow or be of concern. To the sure dismay of Marxists, the worst offenders are outside of “Western Civilization.” The most readily available examples of female oppression and suffering occur in Africa and the Middle East.
Take the Middle East, for example. A few highlights from the organization Amnesty International note that in Syria “where women have been effectively cut off from political engagement.” Across Mesopotamia in Pakistan, “although voting is a constitutional right, in some areas women have been effectively prohibited from voting due to powerful figures in their communities using patriarchal local customs to bar them from going to the polls.” Likewise, in Afghanistan, “authorities recently decided to introduce mandatory photo screening at polling stations, making voting problematic for women in conservative areas, where most women cover their faces in public.”
Though not as severe as limiting the right to vote, Saudi Arabia pushed for legal changes that “allow women to drive, which had previously been banned for many decades...but despite this landmark gain, the authorities continue to persecute and detain many women’s rights activists, simply for peacefully advocating for their rights.”
By a landslide, and for obvious reasons, the freest women in the Middle East reside in Israel.
How do women attached to American (Marxists) feminists attach themselves to a cause that seeks to destroy Western Civilization, when it is so obvious that women in countries founded on the ideals of Western Civilization are inarguably the freest women anywhere in the world? Put another way, how do the women that champion women’s rights vote Democrat, when it is the Marxist base in the Democrat Party that wants to fulfill the communist agenda, which would invariably erode rights and freedoms for the very people it claims to represent?
Women in many African nations fare worse. According to Amnesty International, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, child marriages, and general “confusion” around what constitutes sexual consent are the norm in places like Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe. According to the World Health Organization, more than 200 million girls in 30 countries have been cut against their will. That number is not a typo.
Conditions like these make basic suffrage issues in the Middle East look like a finger prick, and make the purported challenges facing women in the United States an absolute SNL skit. It is an utter joke that feminists in the United States continue to gain traction here and while ignoring real issues abroad.
But Trump is the bad guy.
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