“We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.” –James Madison

You know things are going well when your political opponents resort to the lowest form of Demo-goguery – race baiting.

Barack Obama has portrayed Tea Party Patriots as a gang of malcontents “waving their little teabags” and to ignorant for “a serious conversation.” His Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod adds, “Any time that you have severe economic conditions, there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that’s unhealthy.”

Such undignified characterizations notwithstanding, Obama and his Leftist cadres are clearly concerned that an enlightened grassroots movement to restore Rule of Law will undermine their Socialist agenda.

Last week, Obama surrogates at the National Association to Agitate Colored People (NAACP) took over the effort to stir that pot. The NAACP calculus is simple: If they can coerce the Tea Party into defending itself against spurious charges of racism, they distract the movement from focusing on the abject failure of Barack Obama’s policies.

NAACP president Ben Jealous warned, “The danger of the Tea Party is that people see them and think about periods in history when groups like them were much more powerful than they are now, and so a lot of what we spend energy doing is explaining to people what reality is, and that the reality is that the majority from 2008 still exists. … What we take issue with is the Tea Party’s continued tolerance for bigotry and bigoted statements. The time has come for them to accept the responsibility that comes with influence and make clear there is no place for racism and anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in their movement.”

Jealous and his hooligans went on to officially condemn the movement as “a threat to the pursuit of human rights, justice and equality for all” because of its “the racist elements.”

Perhaps by “racist elements,” Jealous was alluding to the fact that almost 25 percent of Tea Party participants are racial minorities? Of course not.

Vernon Parker, an Arizona Tea Party congressional candidate who is a black, offered this rejoinder: “The NAACP should be concerned about bringing jobs to people in depressed areas. Not the Tea Party.”

South Carolina conservative congressional candidate Tim Scott, who is also a black, added, “I believe that the NAACP is making a grave mistake in stereotyping a diverse group of Americans who care deeply about their country and who contribute their time, energy and resources to make a difference.”

Ward Connerly, founder of the American Civil Rights Institute, concludes, “[R]ace is the engine that drives the political Left. In the courtrooms, on college campuses, and, most especially, in our politics, race is a central theme. Where it does not naturally rise to the surface, there are those who will manufacture and amplify it. Such is the case with the claims that the ‘Tea Partiers’ are a bunch of racists… I am convinced beyond any doubt that all of this is part of the strategic plan being implemented by the Left in its current campaign to remake America.”

Not to be outdone by the NAACP, that erstwhile protagonist of race-baiting mischief, the “Reverend” Al Sharpton, claimed, “The Tea Party, as a political philosophy, is to reverse what civil rights did and that is saying the federal government must protect people. There clearly are some racial leaves in their tea bag, but this is not just about race. It is about how you see government.”

Sharpton, who has retained his official media celeb race-card status despite having fabricated the notorious Tawana Brawley rape hoax, is now treated with the same admiration as the “Reverend” Jesse Jackson, he of the Jew-baiting “Hymies” and “Hymietown” comments.

But perhaps the most influential purveyor of this sort of racism is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who recently emerged from hiding to assert that Tea Party opposition to Obama’s agenda is based on their hatred for “people of color.”

Why is Wright the most influential of the race hustlers? He was Obama’s religious mentor, an inexorable and unapologetic propagator of afrocentric liberation theology and its message of black supremacist doctrine and “social gospel” Marxism.

Wright officiated at Obama’s wedding, baptized his daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope.” In that book, Obama describes Wright as the “vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world.”

What story did that “vessel” teach Obama?

In Wright’s own words, “The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government gives [black people] drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strikes law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, g-d d— America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. G-d d— America for treating our citizens as less than human. G-d d—- America for as long as she acts like she is god and she is supreme.”

Wright calls America “the US-KKK-A” and says the nation is “controlled by and run by rich white people. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in god. And. And-and! God! Has got! To be sick! Of this sh-t!”

In an ridiculous attempt to compare Obama to Jesus, Wright said, “Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people.”

Recall how Obama responded to video evidence of his mentor’s black supremacist rants: “It sounds like he was trying to be provocative. … This is somebody who I have known for 20 years [who] led me to Christ. He is a biblical scholar. He is a well-regarded preacher and somebody who is known for talking about the social gospel. … [Wright is] like family to me.”

The racist Reverend Wright has also been a featured speaker at NAACP events, spouting the same messages as has fellow racist Islamist cleric Louis Farrakhan. So before Ben Jealous lectures Tea Party Patriots about their “continued tolerance for bigotry and bigoted statements,” he ought to pay more attention to his own organization.

Of course, Leftmedia types propagate accusations of racism by Obama’s race-card cutouts. According to political science professor Jim Campbell from the State University of New York, “[M]edia have been successful in [playing the race card]. You have people now talking about the tea party and others in terms of this race issue, and that in itself deflects from what the tea party people are really concerned about, which is out-of-control federal spending and excessive intrusion of government. To the extent that the press, even by suggesting that race is an issue, if it gets everybody talking about the tea party in those terms, they have been successful.”

For the record, racism is thriving in some American sub-cultures and movements, but the Tea Party is not one of them.

I also make a larger point – that the Democrat Party has thoroughly institutionalized racial segregation by co-opting black America as one of its most loyal constituencies. Indeed, an unprecedented 93 percent of black voters, like so many lemmings, march in lockstep to their Democrat masters.

But, in the rhetorical style of Jesse Jackson, the message of race they embrace is a disgrace. The Democrats have replaced the chains of chattel slavery with the chains of welfare and entitlement slavery.

From the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, “I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” However, Leftists race-based policies such as “Affirmative Action” are precisely designed to judge by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.

In 2008, Martin Luther King III declared, “race relations clearly will be advanced … because of President-elect Obama.”

Unfortunately, he was probably referring to “advancement” in the NAACP sense. And if so, he was correct.