Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann compares slavery to todays times by Cherokeetears
As the Tea Party continues to express the absolute worst of American nationalism and imperialism, its front-running presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann, signed a pledge from the Iowa Christian Group’s “Marriage Vow.” This “Vow” acted as a pledge to “preserve the family” by banning pornography, same-sex marriage, and the presidency of Barack Obama.(1)
Not only are these statements obvious and blatantly bigoted remarks, but they also find their shock value in historical inaccuracies. Part of the vow reads:
“Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”
This abstraction that the vow mentions are not accurate, since they don’t take into account the exponential number of slave families broken up by the trade and selling of slaves themselves. Endless amounts of families were broken up because of slavery.(2) There were simply less free slaves that had the opportunity to decide the fate of their families than there are today. Therefore, there were less divorces. Lack of choice and mobility in slave society was hardly a positive aspect of life. This reactionary statement does less to expose the “horrors” of bourgeoisie culture today, and more to show how utterly close the Tea Party exposes it’s flat racism. No wonder other republican candidates refuse to sign such an act. They don’t want to be exposed as racists in such hard terminology. They would prefer to use “soft terms” like “political correctness,” “affirmative action,” and “sanctity of marriage.” Leading Lights see through this farce for the racist, sexist, and heterosexist nature of these reactionary, far-right imperialist comments. This may seem harsh, but it’s the truth.
This is the same woman who claims that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly to end slavery,” referring specifically and after the fact to John Quincy Adams, who was not a Founding Father, since he was 8 when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
The same vow pledges to “end Sharia law,”(3) a statement that shows that multiculturalism is not a priority of American Tea, and that no culture but Christian American culture is acceptable. But many aspects of this culture are more reactionary than Sharia Law, and Christian Culture is more reactionary than Islam, and further serves the ruling class. However, the “Marriage Vow” is a crusade of bigotry that sees itself as the only choice for others. This Vow is ridiculous and shows the fascism rising in the far-right of the First World.
We must fight the racism, sexism, and heterosexism that rises out of reactionary declarations of this “Marriage Vow,” because these reactionary concepts have no basis in reality or betterment, but only in metaphysical and supremacist concepts. This is nationalistic, chauvinistic, and absolutely elitist mentality that only the mentally insane, like Michele Bachmann and the Tea Party, would endorse.