Refugee-Immigrant's List Of American Riddles

By Victor Volsky - As a refugee immigrant to the United States I have expressed amazement at the design of the U.S. political system -- so awkward and unwieldy as to render it almost totally dysfunctional. What follows is a list of other riddles of American life that baffle an immigrant, even one of long standing such as me.

Item: Why do Americans suffer gladly race-hustlers like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton? I understand the overpowering yearning to expiate racial guilt tirelessly fanned by the MSM. But there should be a limit to even extreme masochism. Isn't it a little too much to claim that racial equality is an insidious form of racism, invoking the authority of Martin Luther King, Jr. who demanded the polar opposite? And yet this is exactly what we hear nonstop from the Jackson-Sharpton cabal and their sycophantic cohorts in the white liberal circles. Has any member of the Congressional Black Caucus ever failed to discover racism in anything conservatives do, say, or think? Now that American voters have elected Barack Obama largely as an act of racial penance and hopefully got that guilt out of their system, isn't it time to put an end to this demagogic garbage or at least to turn down its volume?

Item: Why is there such a widespread public misperception regarding the "Establishment" clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? To establish a religion, then as now, means only one thing: to make a specific religion sanctioned and supported by the state over all others. The Founding Fathers knew their history and understood that establishing a religion in America would likely lead to endless strife and maybe even religious wars as in Europe, and that only when all religions are separate -- and equidistant -- from government could religious peace be assured. American history has amply borne out their foresight. Nowhere else on earth has there reigned such religious harmony; nowhere else do people of different creeds live and worship side by side so peacefully and amicably. And yet liberal scholars strive mightily to prove that the Constitution banished religion from the public square, endlessly invoking the sacred "wall of separation between church and state" -- a quotation from Jefferson's private letter that is nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

Item: Speaking of the Amendments, why is the 10th Amendment so flagrantly neglected? It is certainly one of the most important of all Amendments, the bedrock of American federalism. And yet the political class behaves as if it doesn't exist. All right, I understand it is in Washington's interests to ignore the 10th Amendment. But why are the states so shy about asserting their rights?

Item: How did the federal government come to control the national economy? The Constitution has only one provision giving Congress some influence over economic matters, the "interstate commerce" clause. And yet, clinging to this weak reed, Washington manages to wield near-total power over the entire economy on the thinnest, purely legalistic, and often patently risible grounds.

Item: Americans are justly proud of their democratic heritage. Why then do they evince such striking indifference toward their voting rights? Franchise is a privilege; people marched and bled to win it -- and now the right to vote is treated as a meaningless or even vaguely irritating duty imposed imposed on a reluctant citizenry. Voters expect to be flattered, coaxed, and bribed to deign to come to the polls and complimented afterwards for their civic sacrifice. Don't they understand that such indifference is a boon to demagogues and a danger to their cherished democracy?...........................Read More