To paraphrase--What to my wondering eyes should appear but cadres of (Black) Panthers all coming here (to Jena, Louisiana). That was my thought after picking up the Monroe, Louisiana newspaper the other day and reading an article on the front page that stated that the "New Black Panthers" are coming to Jena, Louisiana to patrol the streets to keep the Jena 6 and their families secure from alleged Ku Klux Klan threats. My second thought was that the good folks in Jena, both white and black are just going to love that! I wondered if the police might try to keep them out as a possible disruptive influence, and then I thought, no, that probably won't happen. It wouldn't be politically correct to do that. Now if they happened to be an outfit called "The White Panthers" you can be sure they would be denied access to the streets of Jena, but the Black Panthers probably won't--"racism" and all that, you know.

I can remember when I first got into political activism back in the late 1960s. The original Black Panther party was alive and well, spreading their black Marxist theology among the masses. Of course the media would never admit they were communists--they finally did that themselves--and the media looked rather dumb for not having brought that fact to the fore earlier. But then, you know how it is with the media--much better to have a communist under every bed than to be forced to admit that he's under there. The original Black Panther party seems to have gone the way of all flesh mostly. Survivors of that original group are now about as old as I am (three years short of being classified as antideluvian). However, this newer mutation of them has sprouted from the same Marxist week and the roots and vines are gradually creeping into the "new civil rights movement."

In the same issue of the paper as the story of the Panthers converging on Jena, right on the front page, was a picture of Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, standing with "Rev. Al" Sharpton on her right and Martin Luther King III on her left. Here, I thought that Ms. Blanco was probably in over her head. These people know what the game is and I'm not sure she does. Governor, you ought to be more choosy of the company you keep!

The "New Black Panthers" are an "interesting" group. They claim that capitalism is the primary evil in the world ( I always thought that sin was) and they see revolution as the only solution. These people are anti-Christian. However, they claim they don't draw their inspiration from Marxism. Instead, with a clever play on words, they state that Marx drew his ideology from indigenous African cultures, and they, therefore, eliminate the middle man, so to speak, and hark directly back to those African cultures for what they believe. What they are saying is that those African cultures were Marxist before Marx was. The question then arises--if Marxism, cultural or otherwise, is anti-Christian and should be resisted, then shouldn't this original "Marxist" African culture be resisted also? Such anti-Christian ideologies can be strongly resisted both by the spoken and written word, by the truths of Scripture ("The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God").

The present head of the New Black Panther Party is one Malik "Zulu" Shabazz. He was born Paris Lewis, but I reckon that didn't sound militantly Muslim enough, hence the new moniker. He went to Howard University and got a law degree, was strongly influenced by Louis Farrakhan, and claimed that meeting Farrakhan "changed my life." Oh, I just bet it did.

Shabazz has some rather novel views. He thinks all black prisoners in this country should be freed as they could not possibly have gotten fair trials in such a "racist" country. In 2002 Shabazz noted his "soladarity" with the former H. Rap Brown (also sporting a new Muslim name). Mr. Brown was eventually convicted of killing a black sheriff's deputy in Georgia. Wonder if they was considered a "hate crime" or just plain murder? Shabazz also falls all over himself to support Mumia Abu Jamal, another convicted cop-killer. Of course we know all these cop-killers he so heroically supports are all innocent, because, after all, they were tried in "racist" courts. And this is what's going to be patrolling the streets of Jena, Louisiana supposedly. Folks better hide their kids and put their pets in the garage!

It would seem that Jena, Louisiana is now to be made the new "civil rights" guinea pig. As such, it will be subjected to whatever the Leftist civil rights crowd feels they can get by with, until the town's residents finally get to the place where they are "persuaded" to confess their racism. Then they can be made to sit on "stools of everlasting repentance" for the rest of their lives, while, via sensitivity training and other devices, their town is slowly turned into something none of them will even recognize in another five years.

As we go along, I and others begin to wonder about this whole "racist" concept. It rather seems that the people who push it the strongest are among the most ethnocentric people on God's earth. Maybe they need to begin to recognize that, whatever constitutes "racism" they are every bit as guilty as the rest of the human race. However, for them to do that, they would have to admit that they are just as sinful and neeful of Christ's salvation as the rest of us. And, baby, short of Divine intervention, you know that ain't gonna happen.