Komunidad
July 7, 2015

SINS OF LIBERALISM

By Arturo P. Garcia

More than 150 years ago, after the decisive battle of Gettysburg on July 4, 1863, The Confederacy was soundly defeated in the bloodiest battle ever in the Civil War in the American soil. But sad to say, more than 150 years have passed and yet the forces of slavery and racism still flies the flags of Confederacy in southern states.

Recently,we marked the 150 years of Confederate General Robert Lee surrender of his forces to the Union Forces under General Ulysses Grant at a courthouse in Virginia on April 9, 1865 ending the five years of Civil War in the United States.

But the Civil War did not end there at Lees Surrender. Until now, there are people who like to relive the Civil War, impose slavery and the vain glory of the ill-fated Confederacy of the southern states.

I personally blame this to the sins of liberalism. Liberalism is the idea of letting it be up to the point of not taking arms against the authorities. It is a very transparent of idea of letting people express their political opinions or views as long nobody get hurts.

It is prevalent in the US and that is what the conservatives hates. Yet it is the conservatives especially the rightist who benefits most from liberalism, not the ordinary citizens like us.

Right after the Civil War in the United States, the liberals did not punish the south from seceding from the Union. In fact they even helped the Southern states to reconstruct what was destroyed during the war. This is the policy of magnanimity that the liberal-democrats propagated.

They even give pensions to the Confederate officers and soldier who fought the Union and gave them life-time pensions to their relatives and widows up to this present day. On the other hand, they won’t give a single cent to the more than 260,000 Filipino World War II veterans for the last 70 days and counting.

Besides the life-time pensions, they let the southern states to fly the Confederate flag as a show of “magnanimity in victory.” Thus, until now, the symbols of slavery and racism still flies the capitols and state buildings of the deep south that revolted against the Union in 1861.

I honestly think that this sins of liberalism comes back to haunt us. They inspire racist and bigots to burn African-American churches, shoot the African American worshipers at the churches and kill people for their slave-owning and racist ideology. And that is what liberal magnanimity means to them.

Civil War veterans who fought in the United States brought this kind of magnanimity in the Philippines during the Filipino-American War and their 48 year occupation of the Philippines.

They even gave General Emilio Aguinaldo and other Filipino Generals and officers who surrendered pensions. On the other hand they declared as “bandits” those who continued the liberation struggle and hanged or imprisoned those who opposed them.

After banning the Filipino flag and all symbols of the Philippine struggle against colonialism for 16 years, they let the Filipino flag fly UNDER the American flag in schools and let them display their patriotism under control.

They even promised independence under a Commonwealth and gave the Philippines nominal Independence on July 4, 1946, declaring it as a free Republic.

But their treatment to their own Caucasian brothers are different. It validates the idea that both the Democrats and the Republican shares the ideas of White Supremacy in their own notions of liberalism.

“ Birds of the same feather flocks together”?

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