I stopped watching the NBA when the league caved to China and the woke mob, but former NBA player Charles Barkley has remained a voice of sanity in that insane universe.

He’s spoken up about the Breonna Taylor incident and dismissed the “defund the police” movement, and his latest comments about racism and politics speak directly to the heart of our problem in Washington.

“Man, I think most white people and black people are great people,” Barkley said during CBS’ coverage of Saturday’s March Madness games. “I really believe that in my heart.”

“But I think our system is set up where our politicians, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, are designed to make us not like each other, so they can keep their grasp [on] money and power,” Barkley said.

“They divide and conquer,” Barkley added, saying that people are “stupid” to follow politicians who create issues in communities they “don’t live in.”

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Barkley is 100% correct. Our politicians in D.C. foment anger and distrust to solicit donations, gain votes, and stay in power. Both Democrats and Republicans have leveraged the death of George Floyd for their own political gain, and our country is less trusting and more divided as a result.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Truth isn’t relative. The circumstances surrounding Floyd’s death are complex, and Democrats are especially prone to ignore the evidence to maintain our country’s racial discord.

But Barkley’s faith in the American people echoes my own, and we all need to be reminded that our neighbors aren’t our enemies and our countrymen aren’t the real problem.

I’m in the midst of a hectic travel schedule for my work at the Convention of States Project. I’m travelling to a new state nearly every day, and I have the opportunity to meet hundreds of hard-working everyday Americans from all races and walks of life. As Barkley says, these are good people. They care about their families, communities, and country, and they don’t believe all white people are racist or all black people are criminals.

We need to start trusting our neighbors again, but we’ll never do that as long as Washington remains in control of our country’s future.

Our federal politicians have an enormous amount of power, and they’ll do anything to maintain it. That’s why we need to call an Article V Convention of States. A Convention of States can propose constitutional amendments that limit the power, scope, and jurisdiction of the federal government.

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Limiting federal power will do two things. First, it will lower the incentive for our national leaders to foment distrust. If they don’t have much power to begin with, they won’t be so motivated to keep it.

Second, it will encourage Americans to stop worrying about what’s happening in Washington and focus on their own states and local communities. We’re obsessed with national news because the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court can change our lives with the stroke of a pen. If their authority is limited to a narrow set of topics, we won’t care so much about what they’re doing and can get back to helping our neighbors and improving our towns and cities.

“I truly believe in my heart most white people and black people are awesome people,” Barkley went on to say. “But we are so stupid following our politicians, whether they are Republicans or Democrats, and their only job is, ‘Hey, let’s make these people not like each other. We don’t live in their neighborhoods. [We’ve] all got money. Let’s make the whites and blacks not like each other; let’s make rich people and poor people not like each other; let’s scramble the middle class.’”

“I truly believe that in my heart,” Barkley concluded.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

 

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.