BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, IT’S RACIST TO TEST APTITUDE: Former Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo has an oped in Big Government arguing that all voters should be required to pass the same basic civics test (administered in English) that legal immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship are required to pass:

Shouldn’t all voters possess that same rudimentary knowledge of the Constitution and our federal system of government as naturalized citizens? Why not require all citizens to pass the same civics exam as immigrants have to pass if they want to join the voter rolls? . . . .

This proposal is blatantly “pro-immigrant”: it says native-born citizens should live up to the same expectations we have for new citizens. What’s wrong with that?

Of course, if implemented this proposal will not end all voter ignorance. But it would be a giant step in the right direction. It places equal weight on the responsibilities of voting as on the right to vote.

When I first proposed this a few years ago in a speech to the Tea Party convention in Nashville, I was slammed by the New York Times– which is always a good sign you are onto something good. The NY TIMES, lacking any other argument, played the race card, charging that I was advocating a “return to Jim Crow laws.” Isn’t it blatantly racist to assume blacks can’t pass a simple civics exam in the same rates as others?

Why yes, yes it is quite racist, Tom. But the Democrats literally survive on racism–it is the air that keeps the party alive these days. And perpetuating the stereotype that blacks are inferior, cannot be expected to compete with other races, require government programs to survive, etc., are all part of the Democrats’ agenda of keeping blacks distracted and enraged by incessant, false cries of “racism!,” which is designed to keep blacks and other “aggrieved” minorities firmly planted in perpetuity on the Democrat plantation.