Update to a story from last month: Louisiana State Senator Elbert Guillory has produced a video to his constituents, explaining why he switched parties from Democrat to Republican. This made him the first black Republican state senator in Louisiana since Reconstruction.
To reiterate my earlier reservations, I'm not a big fan of party switchers. Party affiliation is a big deal, something voters take into account when casting their ballots. Switching parties in the middle of a term has never seemed entirely fair to me.
Having said that, I thought Guillory's speech at the time of his party switch was excellent, and this video is even better. The gentleman from Louisiana is playing my tune when he says, "At the heart of liberalism is the idea that only a great and powerful Big Government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans. But the Left is concerned with one thing: control. And they disguise this control as charity."
"The idea that blacks - or anyone else, for that matter - need the government to get ahead in life is despicable," says Guillory. "And even more important, this idea is a failure. Our communities are just as poor as they have always been. Our schools continue to fail our children. Our prisons are filled with young black men who should be at home, being fathers. Our self-initiative, and our self-reliance, have been sacrificed, in exchange for allegiance to our overseers."
