How being black makes one more qualified to be President, or: Why I'm voting for Al Sharpton

I'm an Arizona resident, so assuming I remember to get an absentee ballot, I'll be voting in the Primaries pretty soon. And I'm not saying I won't change my mind, but if it were right now, I'd definitely vote for Al Sharpton. Why? A lot of it has to do with him being black.

Okay, not so much being black. But rather being black and spending a lifetime at the forefront of the civil rights movement. What this means is as far as domesticate policy, he's seen the worst of what America's policy can do, and he knows what needs to be done to improve it.

I posted earlier about what Sharpton's campaign page says about the Right to Vote Amendment, or rather I cut and pasted Sharpton's platform on the Right to Vote Amendment, but to refresh your memory here's the opening on that.

Most Americans believe the legal right to vote in our democracy is explicit (not just implicit) in our Constitution and laws. However, our Constitution only provides for nondiscrimination in voting on the basis of race, sex, and age in the 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments respectively. The U.S. Constitution contains no explicit right to vote!

Even though the right to vote is the supreme right in a democracy, the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore constantly reminded lawyers there is no explicit or fundamental right to suffrage in the Constitution. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia besieged Gore's lawyer with inquiries premised on the assumption there is no constitutional right of suffrage in the election of a president, and state legislatures have the legal power to choose presidential electors without recourse to a popular vote. Only a Voting Rights Amendment can fix these flaws.

This is a much more important than people give it credit for, and it seems it takes a candidate whose seen members of his community denied the right to vote through poll taxes and Jim Crow laws to recognize the necessity of this (which is only theoretical, but that would explain why none of the other candidates are bringing this up). And what's more this entirely self-evident. The right to vote is the very foundation of Constitutional Democracy, and the fact that there is nothing in the Constitution that explicitly gives us the right to vote is even more egregious than the fact that the Constitution has nothing banning same-sex couples from marrying ('cos that latter thing is important for some reason).

And this is all well and good, but what of civil rights? To me all civil rights stem from access to good education for all Americans. Since as Ashcroft has proven with the PATRIOT Act, civil rights are meaningless if they easily taken away, and the way to prevent them from being taken away is a well-educated population who knows what their rights are and are willing to defend it from the tyrannical minded people who would oppress them.

And Sharpton seems to agree:

Attorney General John Ashcroft sent a letter to the National Rifle Association on May 17, 2001, asserting that every American has a RIGHT TO A GUN. In it he wrote: "Let me state unequivocally my view that the text and the original intent of the Second Amendment clearly protect the right of individuals to keep and bear firearms." It's interesting that Mr. Ashcroft's letter was sent on the 47th anniversary of the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown decision, which declared Plessy v. Ferguson's segregationist "separate but equal" doctrine unconstitutional. It's also an ironic contrast to the fact that there's NO RIGHT TO AN EDUCATION in the Constitution!

"The right to an education is not guaranteed, either explicitly or implicitly, by the Constitution, and therefore could not constitute a fundamental right." U.S. District Judge Michael P. McCuskey Decatur Illinois School Board Ruling, January 11, 2000.

That's why Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. - believing that EDUCATION IS A HUMAN RIGHT - has proposed to add an education amendment to the U. S. Constitution based on the RIGHT of all Americans to have a public education of equal high quality. It was introduced in the U.S. House as H.J. Res. 29:seems to agree.

I suppose here is where I admit I have no expectation that Sharpton will actually win the primary. But that's not important now. I'll vote for whichever Democrat has the nomination in November, but there isn't a significant difference between any of the front runners right now, Lieberman is for all purposes out of the race, and Kucinich apparently has no clue how to run an national campaign. Sharpton may have no political experience and no strong understanding of diplomacy, but that could be made up for with a good running mate and a competent cabinet (I'm hoping we end up with a Secrety of State Moseley-Braun myself). But he knows what needs fixin' in this country and has a plan for fixin' it. So I'm going with Sharpton.