Canada needs an aboriginal Star Parker. One would do. A hundred would take our country into the 22nd Century, strong and free for real. [Parker, Tanis Fiss], a young black woman, was a welfare mom and thief, who had five abortions before she turned 23. She lived with a succession of toxic brutal men, drug-addicted, angry, unhappy, deep in the underclass. "Let me get this straight," she said, as a pregnant 23 year old, running away from another violent man. "All I have to do to receive $625 a month, $200 in food stamps, free housing, free medical and dental care, is keep this baby, not get a job, and not get married? Where do I sign up?"

Parker calls the American welfare system, Uncle Sam's Plantation, which is the title of her book, subtitled How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor And What We Can Do About It. This is critical reading for anyone who cares about the future, as is Tanis Fiss's recent paper, Apartheid, Canada's Ugly Secret. Both document the virtually criminal fleecing of the American and Canadian people by a ruling class of bureaucrats in whose direct monetary interest it is that native Canadians and black Americans stay poor, addicted, drunk, under-educated, resentful and very angry.

(Copyright National Post 2004)

enickson@nationalpost.com

Canada needs an aboriginal Star Parker. One would do. A hundred would take our country into the 22nd Century, strong and free for real. Parker, a young black woman, was a welfare mom and thief, who had five abortions before she turned 23. She lived with a succession of toxic brutal men, drug-addicted, angry, unhappy, deep in the underclass. "Let me get this straight," she said, as a pregnant 23 year old, running away from another violent man. "All I have to do to receive $625 a month, $200 in food stamps, free housing, free medical and dental care, is keep this baby, not get a job, and not get married? Where do I sign up?"

Today she is Black America's warrior queen, the one American woman telling the truth about the slavery that is welfare.

Parker calls the American welfare system, Uncle Sam's Plantation, which is the title of her book, subtitled How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor And What We Can Do About It. This is critical reading for anyone who cares about the future, as is Tanis Fiss's recent paper, Apartheid, Canada's Ugly Secret. Both document the virtually criminal fleecing of the American and Canadian people by a ruling class of bureaucrats in whose direct monetary interest it is that native Canadians and black Americans stay poor, addicted, drunk, under-educated, resentful and very angry.

Hers is a dangerous mission. When Parker began to tell the story of her escape from welfare dependency, she was first called names, then cursed. Then police escorts became necessary when she lectured at college campuses. By the time she started hosting her own radio show, her children were receiving death threats.

A similar fate waits any aboriginal who bucks the system. And despite Paul Martin's vow to "do more," "more" after last week's roundtable meeting with 20 Cabinet ministers and 70 aboriginal leaders, apparently means more bureaucrats, more commissions, more Secretariats, and more OPM (other people's money), that is to say money not earned by any of the men and women sitting at that roundtable. In other words, our money.

To what purpose? Spending on native affairs has doubled during the Liberal reign, and every permutation of social engineering and hopeful seeding of entrepreneurship has been tried. Every "white" institution, including banks and local business, has tried to help. We've spent more than $70-billion in 10 years, and that doesn't count provincial contributions, which amount to another $30- billion. With what result? Life on almost every reserve resembles that of a Third World nation. Unemployment reaches 95% on many reserves. Housing stock, despite the $3.8-billion spent, by us, on housing for 97,500 native families, is in deep disrepair, resembling a shantytown imagineered by Steven Spielberg, in his darkest moment.

Parker's first step off the Plantation happened when two young black entrepreneurs in South Central refused to hire her when she asked to be paid under the table. They didn't believe, they told her, in cheating the government. It was her first encounter with principle.

Parker does not only not believe in welfare, she demonstrates precisely why the minimum wage only punishes the poor, by raising prices for poor consumers, and reducing the number of jobs available. She makes the claim, and manages to conclusively prove it, that "after 30 years of social engineering, blacks had become political pawns of the Left, who had blamed every social ill on racism. Through a co-ordinated program of distortion and misinformation, they had conditioned too many blacks to depend on the federal government for solutions."

As Parker reports, in 1965, black businesses heavily patronized by local residents were the economic backbone of their neighbourhoods. But by 1995, after decades of "remedies" enacted against discrimination, 65% of working middle class blacks were employed by the government, and 30% worked for corporations that had been subjected to affirmative action guidelines.

Like Parker, Tanis Fiss, herself 1/8th native, says enough is enough. Canada's reserves -- which expand in size every year, still, astonishingly owned by the government -- must be released to the aboriginal community. Who each must own, fee simple, their own property. The Indian Act must be abolished, the payouts must stop. Canada's aboriginals must stand on their own feet, without our help. They are not 3/5 human, they are fully human and fully responsible.

Parker makes the point that slavery was a crime, and that the hundred years before the Civil Rights Act were hardly better. Guilt money makes it worse. Let us mourn on our own terms, and in our own time, she asks.

Parker describes a poignant moment, in her recovery. She walks by the man who used to hit her, the father of one of her children, a man she was deeply in love with. He was sleeping on a park bench and so far gone in his addiction, he not only didn't recognize her, he harassed her for money. When next you see a native Canadian lying in a park, consider that your money, and your government put them there, and that their lives have been stolen by the people who run them for profit.