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 Democrats continue to be enamored with the joyful promise of Big Government. Unfortunately they have successfully convinced many Republicans of its merits as well. The truth, however, is that a bloated federal government is not the friend that many in the African American community suppose. Before we continue the discussion, however, we must make one important distinction. Republicans in the past have exercised the power of the federal government to enforce the rule of law over and against discrimination, insurrection and vigilante violence. Democrats wield the power of the federal government to intrude into to the lives of peaceful, law-abiding people. This intrusion frequently appears benign, as when the government taxes one citizen and gives to another, but it slowly pervades every aspect of life and chokes out freedom and liberty.
After President Lincoln launched the Civil War, he extended Constitutional rights to slaves and used the military to ensure these rights. President Grant, a Republican, used federal troops in Georgia to ensure ratification of the 15th amendment (giving blacks the right to vote); he quelled white race riots in Louisiana, and put South Carolina under martial law to suppress the Ku Klux Klan. President Nixon also used the governments power to enforce laws and combat discrimination when he ordered the National Guard to enforce school desegregation when southern Governors, notably Louisianas, had closed schools rather than integrate.
Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt, together largely responsible for the explosion of government, were also two of the most racist presidents of the past century. Woodrow Wilson was the first southerner and only the second Democrat elected since the Civil War. He re-segregated the federal government and demoted African Americans who had risen to prominent positions. He largely inspired the Ku Klux Klan propaganda film The Birth of a Nation and helped breathe life back into that racist organization. He also adhered to the socialist idea that the government ought to intrude more, not less into the lives of ordinary Americans. During World War I he seized large sections of American industry and virtually suspended civil rights. Cindy Sheehan would have been jailed within days of her protest under Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt, though largely applauded by the black community (he actually won the black vote in 1930), betrayed his southern Democrat roots once he gained office. After receiving the endorsement of several national black newspapers, he quickly denounced them as communist and banned them. Roosevelt then presided over the greatest expansion of federal power our country had ever seen. Under Roosevelt America morphed into the welfare state we know today.
 African Americans have traditionally cheered the big government welfare state inaugurated under Democrat administrations. The promise of big government of course is that it will take care of each and every citizen and ensure equality of living standards. The truth, however, as African Americans are beginning to realize, is that big government is the single biggest obstacle to black empowerment today. The welfare state has crippled the black family, pulled men out of the home, blocked children from exercising school choice, and through badly devised drug laws incarcerated vast numbers of black men.
One of the sad legacies of government intrusion is the inability of parents to discipline their children. Today children know that if their parents punish them, with one phone call they can have their parents taken to jail. Parents are now afraid of punishing their children because the balance of power has shifted to their side. Whereas the community and the church used to moderate the use of discipline in the home and intervene when necessary, the government has abrogated this power, like countless others, to itself. The end result is an empowered, arrogant and often unrestrained youth. Adults wonder why so many young people act in ways unimagined by previous generations. At some point the black community in this country must grapple with the Trojan Horse of benevolent social programs. Once government is invited into the home, once it pays the bills and rears the kids, it cannot be resisted. If the cynical golden rule is he who has the gold makes the rules, then the government will call the shots in the African American community as long as families continue to look to the government for salvation. This is not the empowered vision of the future cherished by Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, or Dr. Martin Luther King.
The Chicago Republican Party calls for the government to use its power to enforce the rule of law so that discrimination will cease, but to also exercise constitutionally responsible restraint in regards to its social ambitions. The black community needs less government intrusion, not more. We also call on the black community to rid itself of the demeaning illusion that the government can solve every problem.
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