Allen West on Health Care: Obama Wants You to "Be His Slave"

Congressman Allen West is perturbed by the U.S. Supreme Court's upholding of the individual mandate. That isn't particularly surprising, so when he called it "a sad day for Americans," there wasn't a blog post about it. Likewise when he said, "Well, I got a great idea. I believe that for personal security, every American should have to go out and buy a Glock 9-mm, and if you don't do it, we'll tax you. Now I wonder how the liberals will feel about that." Because it was stupid and unsurprising.

But now he's gone and said something dumb enough, hypocritical enough, that it's probably worth pointing out: At a Port St. Lucie rally on Sunday, West said of Barack Obama, "He does not want you to have the self-esteem of getting up and earning and having that title of American. He'd rather you be his slave."

Now, the Pulp does not often presume to speak for slaves. But it seems safe to assume that if any of them had caught wind of West's blatant, ridiculous trolling, they would probably be kind of confused as to how offering the disadvantaged food, education, and health care was in any way related to their lifetime of soul-crushing servitude and systematic oppression, except to say it seems like kind of the opposite thing.

But no matter. We're talking about Allen West -- the guy who declared himself a "modern-day Harriet Tubman." The guy who has said, over and over again, that using "that very nefarious theme of the race card" is "absolutely reprehensible" but then turns around and accuses the first African-American president of literally enslaving people. How about that time he turned a made-up racial attack into a fundraising drive? Let's not even get into the time he paraphrased Martin Luther King Jr. last week to call the Congressional Black Caucus racist.

Nobody had his views on health care change because West accused Obama of enslaving people. But the first black congressman from Florida since Reconstruction -- who has made quite a big deal about his being so -- is running around using blatantly racial rhetoric to attack legislation he doesn't like. Even if you agree with him -- is that really how we want the discussion to go?