St. Lucia Starved for attention, liberal nut-job Harry Belafonte told the Most Rev. Al Sharpton on PMS-NBC last week that “There should be this lingering infestation of really corrupt people who sit trying to dismantle the wishes of the people, the mandate that has been given to Barack Obama, and I don’t know what more they want.” He then went on, “The only thing left for Barack Obama to do is to work like a third-world dictator and just put all these guys in jail.” Belafonte took “crazy” a step further, saying Republicans are “violating the American desire” by working to keep government limited, taxes low and U.S. debt under control. You could clearly hear Sharpton chuckling in the background. Harry Belafonte is one of the many liberal, one-hit-wonder entertainers who have one success in their 20s and then spend the rest of their lives accepting awards like the Kennedy Center medal from the media elite. You know you are about to die when you win a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys while a video montage of your “courageous activist achievements” plays in the background. (The same montage plays at the Grammys when you die.) I guess it’s still OK to make money in entertainment as long as you are ashamed of it. Belafonte is like the Nancy Grace of activists; he makes impassioned, wild accusations in hopes that, eventually, one of them is true. I was in a third-world country, St. Lucia (dangerously near Venezuela), with my family when Belafonte poetically aired his longing for even more strongman thuggery by Obama. St. Lucia is the typical, poverty-stricken, crime-ridden, third-world island for which Belafonte longs. We arrived in December for tourist season or, as the pickpockets in the capital city call it, “The Show.” Soccer abounds in St. Lucia, always a sure sign that a country is probably not very good. Industry came to St. Lucia in the mid-20th century, and to paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke, has since left. The island gained independence from Great Britain in 1979, and the United Labour Party took over. It is a classic, Belafonte-esque utopia where poverty stricken citizens are ruled by entrenched, crooked politicians — the kind of country that would be in Obama’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Anytime political parties with “United, Labor or The People’s” in their name get in power, the country rapidly goes downhill. The French and the English fought over St Lucia 14 times; each won seven times and lost seven. I’d like to see a rubber game aired on Pay-Per-View. My guess is France actually won the last war and stuck Great Britain with the bill by giving them the island. It would be like planting one’s flag on a condemned building. The island’s main exports are poverty, despair and HIV. It is the only island where shoplifters complain about pickpockets to the corrupt police and get an immediate ruling. We did get talked into going whale watching, which was really just like a big group of tourists on a boat becoming increasingly disappointed. Like most countries, the best elements are those where free-market practitioners are allowed to flourish. People who own their own boat or taxi are quite pleasant and likable. Unlike Americans, they actually do not expect to be taken care of by their government and are not preconditioned to mooch off of the work of others. These people seem to get along well together. I saw two locals sharing a cab. One got the tires, and the other got the battery. Enemies of the government are punished and the voices of opposition are squelched. To Belafonte and other liberals, it is nirvana of trickle-up poverty where there are no wealthy left to tax. “Thought Police” control opposition in an Orwellian, Big Brother world where a political dissident, found with a tire around his head that had been set on fire with gasoline and dragged though the town square, is ruled to have died of “natural causes.” Belafonte did not respond to my requests for comment, mainly because I did not make any. Yet he and his liberal cohorts will continue to serve as “useful idiots” in the movement afoot to push America toward a socialist utopia, which is easy to sell in the name of “fairness and equality.” But the lessons of history are clear. Most despots and tyrants began their ascension to power on the pretext of equal outcomes for all, while jailing or silencing any voices of opposition. Day-oy-vey!
Ron Hart is a libertarian columnist who can be reached at www.ronaldhart.com.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: RON HART: Day-O: Daylight come and I wanna go home