Just as Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain predicted, he has become the most recent victim of the race-baiting left's high-tech lynching of prominent, conservative black men.  Days before the Cain sexual harassment smear emerged from the sewers of liberal trash journalism, MSNBC's Martin Bashir hosted contributor Karen Finney who proclaimed that conservatives only liked Cain because, "they think he's a black man who knows his place."  As Bashir actually thanked her on-air for making such an offensive and ignorant remark (far from being a submissive position, conservatives are supporting Cain in his effort to ascend to the highest office in the land), Finney granted, "I know that's harsh, but that's how it sure seems to me."

That's an interesting moment of candor since it now sure seems to any American paying attention that Finney and her fellow liberals dislike Cain because they think he's a black man who doesn't know his place.  Diversity of thought amongst minorities -- particularly blacks -- is forbidden in the church of liberalism.  Having constructed their entire political kingdom on the back of the dollars-for-votes dependency model, self-made black men who stray from the liberal plantation and threaten to carry the empowering message of personal (not government) reliance to throngs of minorities currently under the left's spell of entitlement, must be dealt with severely.  Destroying them professionally and personally is a small price to pay to keep the plantation thriving.

And so, with that greater good in mind, four lily white liberals (Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, Anna Palmer and Kenneth Vogel) authored a hit piece on the prominent conservative businessman in a desperate attempt to smear him out of contention for the Republican presidential nomination.  This gutter politics is proof positive of what I've held for a long time: if you want to catch a modern day glimpse of old school white-on-black racism, behold the way white liberals treat black conservatives.

The racial motivations in this particular story cannot be missed.  This is, after all, the same political movement that scolded anyone who dared suggest that the serial infidelity and alleged sexual assaults committed by white liberal Bill Clinton were relevant to his pursuit of the presidency. 

And this is the same political movement that was so disinterested in the adultery of white liberal John Edwards who fathered a child with a campaign worker while his wife was losing her fight with cancer, that the National Enquirer tabloid out-scooped them.  And even as late as June of this year, while Edwards faced criminal indictment for his attempts to illegally cover-up the scandal, fellow white liberals like Chris Matthews continued to defend him, suggesting that his prosecution was, "one of those [politically motivated] things you read about in third world countries."

And this is the same political movement that yawned at the sexual predilections and cell phone dalliances of white liberal Anthony Weiner, eagerly defending him from the "savagery" of conservative media types like Andrew Breitbart.

Yet this same movement that had to catapult itself over mountains of evidence in order to ignore the indiscretions of those white liberals enthusiastically skewered a black conservative based on the flimsy and unsubstantiated testimony of undisclosed sources.  The case against Cain was so weak that after bringing the accusation, the lead author of the smear, white liberal Jonathan Martin, hilariously suggested on national television that it was Cain's responsibility -- not his -- to explain the accusation.  This embarrassing performance didn't earn him skepticism and scorn from his fellow white liberals like Chris Matthews.  Rather, Matthews congratulated him on breaking the story.

Martin's colleague at the now forever tarnished website Politico, Mike Allen, only added to the pathetic transparency of this racial attack when he appeared on another MSNBC program, "Morning Joe."  Asked if Politico could cite any evidence beyond the allegation that Cain had made gestures "that were not overtly sexual but that made women uncomfortable," Allen ecstatically announced that their story had, "48,000 mentions" on the social media rumor mill Twitter.  The anatomy of a smear: the evidence is irrelevant...all that matters is that the accusation spreads.

The attack on Cain certainly isn't the first of its kind.  The original high-tech lynching of conservative Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas for the same stereotypical allegations, the constant attacks on "Uncle Tom" economists Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams, the belligerent nastiness directed at self-proclaimed welfare brat turned conservative champion Star Parker, and the persistent threats faced by tea-party Congressman Allen West all stand as stark depictions of the regard liberals have for blacks who dare to think differently than them.

If nothing else, at least we now know what PBS's Tavis Smiley meant several months ago when he promised this election would be "the most racist in the history of this Republic."  The left is seeing to that. 

Peter is a public high school government teacher and radio talk show host in central Indiana. Email peter@peterheck.com, visit www.peterheck.com, or like him on Facebook.