Book Reviews

Sheriff David Clarke: “Cop Under Fire”

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The Democrat party’s radical ideology, the nation’s welfare state and the existing educational system detrimentally impact black Americans in poor communities Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. explains in his forthcoming book, “Cop Under Fire: Moving Beyond Hashtags of Race, Crime, & Politics for a Better America.” The title, coauthored with Nancy French and published by Worthy Publishing, is expected to be publicly available on March 7, 2017.

As a self-described conservative who runs as a Democrat, (though he’s never officially joined the party), Clarke is a reformer who hopes to lead a revolution against radicalism in the Democrat Party. “I’m not letting them get away with this political genocide of black people; I’m staying to free black minds from the shackles of the destructive ideology of modern liberalism,” Clarke declares.

In a chapter titled, “The Left’s Dreaded Enemy: Black Conservatives,” Clarke explains from personal experience that the left works to demonize and marginalize black conservatives by unleashing vitriolic attacks. “They go after those who don’t walk lock step with them, seeing them as ‘runaway slaves.’ The resulting smear campaign is a modern metaphorical lynching,” Clarke writes.

“Liberals like to call themselves progressive. The only thing that they are progressing is black people’s misery.”

He argues that Lyndon B. Johnson’s “‘war on poverty’” actually represents “a declaration of war on the black family” because government financially incentivizes mothers to remain single in order to maximize their government-provided benefits, thus levying a financial penalty for marriage and undermining the man’s role as a provider.

Clarke says that “Now, 70 percent of black children are growing up without dads in the home, the rate of pregnancy amongst unwed black females is more than twice as high than amongst white females; schools are failing; there’s high black unemployment and obscene rates of poverty and criminal involvement. This is what real racism looks like.”

After noting the consistently large proportion of black Americans who vote for Democrat candidates, Clarke asserts:

“We need to recognize that the destructive liberal ideology of Democrats has destroyed the black family, destroyed black motivation, destroyed the once strong black work ethic, and estranged black men from involvement in their children’s lives. We need to force the Democrat party to come to terms with what they’ve done—and continue to do—to their most loyal friends.”

In a chapter titled “American Education Embraces and Enforces Poverty,” Clarke postulates that the nation’s subpar, locked-down public education system perpetuates poverty in poor black communities.

“One’s level of education, of course, determines how much money the children will be able to earn later in life. Poor kids receive less education and—consequently—earn less money. And the cycle continues.” Clarke also points out that poor people cannot afford to move their children to good school districts.

He advocates for “school choice,” which directs government education money to a program that parents choose, “whether that’s public school, private school, home school, or charter school.” And he also notes that in 2016 the NAACP expressed opposition to charter schools, thereby “…opposing the one program that is advantageous to black children.”

Voicing an analysis mirroring Accuracy in Academia’s contention that liberalism pervades American schools, Clarke opined:

“Schools these days fail at educating our kids, but they succeed in indoctrinating them. We used to look at schools as a place where children were sent to learn about our country, our values, our shared heritage, and our collective knowledge. Now teachers are instructing children that they need to radically transform the nation. Schools are no longer institutions of learning, they are laboratories of progressive indoctrination. Encouraging critical thought has been replaced by regurgitation of leftist ideology to get a passing grade. These days, students know how to address the transgendered with the proper pronouns, but they aren’t able to do basic math. Textbooks emphasize America’s failures and minimize our accomplishments.”

In another chapter, “Convention of the States: the Next American Revolution,” Clarke argues that Americans should invoke Article V of the US Constitution to hold a convention to combat the government’s exponentially expanding powers. He cites the national debt, the creation of onerous laws that burden businesses, the Federal government’s excessive power and the deterioration of the states’ autonomy.

Clarke also discusses Black Lives Matter and its founders, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors, highlighting the radicalism that undergirds the movement and even pointing out BLM’s stated interest in “…disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement…” He asserts that “…their goal is radical leftist racism and hatred.”

The media did not escape without criticism. In a reference to Black Lives Matter Clarke says that “…the media protects and lies about this insidious terror organization.”

He specifically recounted the story of his tense media appearance with Don Lemon on CNN during the Republican National Convention, stating that “CNN has implicitly endorsed the #BlackLIESMatter movement by framing the organization as sensitive to black matter, and I wasn’t going to let them flaunt their sensitivity in front of me. I wasn’t going to let them pander.”

Clarke says that as he departed the CNN interview, he “…received the stony glare of the producer. If looks could kill, I would’ve been a dead man.”

Elsewhere, Clarke briefly attacks the media’s leftist slant, employing the quip: “…the liberal media and Democrats (oh-but-I-repeat-myself)…”

The book covers more topics than those mentioned in this article and also offers some autobiographical information about Clarke’s life, including his childhood and career.

Inevitably, liberals will decry Clarke and his book because it opposes so many left-wing narratives in American society. When this book is released, Sheriff Clarke will certainly be a “Cop Under Fire.”

Alex Nitzberg is an intern at the American Journalism Center at Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Alex Nitzberg
Alex Nitzberg is a senior writer for Accuracy in Academia. His writing has been published at Townhall.com, NewsBusters.org and elsewhere. In 2016 he was an intern with the American Journalism Center.

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