Over the last several decades, Liberals and Democrats have been pulling off the greatest scam of all time -- rewriting history itself. It's amazing how, in a free society, they have managed to hijack the past, twisting the truth by subtle manipulation. Somehow the Left has convinced a sizeable portion of Americans that lowered expectations and government coddling are their birthright by reason of their African ancestry. The new slavery is an enslavement of the mind, and its victims willingly embrace their chains.

Multiculturalists (those who preach self-segregation) have convinced many black Americans to believe they even have a different history from the rest of the country. This is a distortion of reality that has already caused much damage to our national identity. What is "black history month" supposed to represent, anyway? All those people and events singled out for special recognition as being part of "black history" were, in fact, AMERICAN events and AMERICAN people. Every American should celebrate the achievements of Americans who made a positive impact on our shared history, without dividing them according to skin color. All Americans have equal reason and right to be proud of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin as well as Booker T. Washington and Benjamin Banneker.

Race-baiting demagogues use hate and fear to keep blacks from considering candidates from any political party but Democrats when in the voting booth. Yet it was Democrats who seceded from the United States in order to preserve their "right" to own other human beings. It was Democrats who formed the Klu Klux Klan and instituted Jim Crow laws, Democrats who fought for "separate but equal" treatment of black Americans, Democrats who stood in the doorways of schools to keep blacks out and Democrats who turned fire hoses on blacks to keep them from voting. And it has been Democrats who have worked to pin all those injustices on Republicans, who have been the true "party of inclusion" all along.

Most important, it was Democrats who founded and preserved and continue to push for social programs designed to destroy autonomy and self-reliance. Lowering standards for education and employment based on race or sex sends the message "you aren't good enough to compete" to members of the "favored" group. So-called "affirmative" action programs and racial quotas only send the message, "you can't make it without help." Yet an overwhelming number of minorities vote for those who continue to push race-based condescension. How do Democrats keep fooling the people they have been oppressing into voting for them, year after year?

Democrats continue to use the false history they invented to frighten and anger blacks, to prevent them from voting for anyone but Democrats. Those who dare to embrace Conservatism are ostracised, derided as "Uncle Toms" and "Aunt Jemimas" for expressing their own point of view. Liberals have consistently characterised former Secretary of State and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell and Secretary of State and former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice as "house slaves" and "sellouts." Rice was even cartooned as Prissy, the lying, lazy slave girl portrayed by Butterfly McQueen in "Gone With the Wind." Most recently, NAACP leader Julian Bond referred to both Powell and Rice, two of the most important and influential people in the world, as "tokens," merely because they refuse to wave the flag of racial victimhood.

Worst of all, I think, are white Democratic politicians who play politics in black churches, to show how "down" they are with the dark-skinned crowd. That sort of pandering is sometimes actually painful to watch. Who can forget Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry giving the "black power" salute while speaking to the NAACP? Or Bill Clinton claiming the mantle of America's "first black President?"

Witness Senator Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) own recent faux pas in this regard, on the national holiday Ronald Reagan created to honor the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. It was King who famously dreamed that his children would "one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." A nation, in other words, without race-based quotas or standards... a nation where skin color is not used to herd people into voting blocs.

While visiting the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ, a black church in Harlem, Clinton made a political speech, as Democrats often do in churches. "The House of Representatives is run like a plantation," she told the congregation, "and you know what I'm talking about." That's right -- you people obviously just got in from picking cotton, so you must know what a plantation is like, right? Would people like Clinton get away with those sorts of remarks unscathed, if not for the "D" after their names? After a brief flurry of concern from Conservatives, the HMS Hillary sailed on, undisturbed.

Obviously, Clinton and other Democrats -- black and white -- use emotionally loaded slavery references to paint their political opponents as oppressors. They gamble on the ignorance of history that constitutes a public education these days. The fact that the Left continues to oppose true education reform -- abolishing tenure and subjecting schools to competition through vouchers -- comes as no surprise.

If public schools were run more efficiently and competitively, those who attend them might learn more about American history -- the real history -- than the Left wants them to know. The chains of the new slavery are forged from ignorance, after all.

8 Feb UPDATE: Julian Bond's reference to Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell was incorrectly reported, as it turns out. He did not call them "tokens," but called them "human shields against criticism of [the Bush administration's] record on civil rights" instead. While it's difficult to see a distinction between the two insults, the quote was incorrect.