He's TRYING to score points.
Posted on 03/02/2005 2:10:48 PM PST by gidget7
-----Having learned nothing, Kerry now boosts Stalinist W.E.B. Du Bois
Why has John Kerry sponsored a Senate resolution honoring a Stalinist who championed racial separatism?
The Soviet Union awarded W.E.B. Du Bois the Lenin Peace Prize. Maoist China staged a national holiday in his honor in 1959. Now, for reasons unexplained, the Democratic Party's 2004 presidential nominee seeks to honor Du Bois too.
Kerry's efforts to honor Du Bois have been joined by fellow Bay State Democrat Ed Markey, who, along with more than three-dozen colleagues, has advanced a similar resolution in the House of Representatives. Both resolutions await floor votes. In addition to praising Du Bois as a "defender of freedom," Markey's February 17 proclamation bizarrely maintains that Du Bois--a longtime Socialist who officially joined the Communist Party late in life--played "an intricate role in the development of the entrepreneurial spirit" and "capitalism" among African-Americans.
On February 16, John Kerry promoted his Senate resolution, cosponsored by Democratic Senators Edward Kennedy (Mass.) and Carl Levin (Mich.), by declaring, "Dr. Du Bois taught us that the promise of freedom is honored through action." But Du Bois hated freedom, and through his actions of renouncing his American citizenship and joining the Communist Party he showed this. In writing longtime Communist Party U.S.A. Chairman Gus Hall in 1961 to become a member of his outfit, the reflexively anti-American intellectual called communism "the only way of human life" and predicted that the free market was "doomed to self-destruction."
The man whom some might call the Ward Churchill of mid-century America, Du Bois fawned over any totalitarian regime that opposed America--Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Imperial Japan, and even, after a trip there in 1937, Nazi Germany. Admitting that the Nazis had stamped out freedom, Du Bois nevertheless lauded them for having "a nation at work, after a nightmare of unemployment; and the results of this work are shown not simply by private profits, but by houses for the poor; new roads; an end of strikes and labor troubles; widespread industrial and unemployment insurance; the guarding of public and private health; great celebrations, organizations for old and young, new songs, new ideals, a new state, a new race." While condemning anti-Semitism, Du Bois called it "a reasoned prejudice" in Hitler's Germany.
Du Bois's position on American entry into World War II shifted from a pacifist stance during the Hitler-Stalin Pact to one of intervention after Operation Barbarossa. The Nazi attack on the Soviets, conceded Du Bois, "reorients all our thinking." After the outbreak of the Korean War, Du Bois contended in 1950 that "the North Koreans are fighting exactly the things for which Americans fought in 1776." Three years later, he eulogized Stalin as a "great" and "courageous" man, "attacked and slandered as few men of power have been." In his posthumously published autobiography, he called the crackdown on religion behind the Iron Curtain "the greatest gift of the Russian Revolution to the modern world."
What's to honor there?
Kerry correctly points out that Du Bois helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He omits noting that the NAACP kicked Du Bois out of the organization--twice. After writing in 1920, "Absolutely segregate the races and sections of the world," the author of The Souls of Black Folk boasted in 1933: "I fight Segregation with Segregation." This infuriated the NAACP's leadership, particularly when they learned of Southern segregationists' quoting Du Bois to justify the denial of New Deal relief programs to African-Americans. In the late 1950s, Du Bois would separate himself from Martin Luther King just as he had earlier separated himself from other legitimate civil rights leaders. "I do not pretend to 'love' white people," the NAACP founder declared in contrasting his position to King's.
How does all this mesh with Kerry's contention that Du Bois's "legacy of courage can be seen each time our nation voices our beliefs in equality, in justice, and most of all, in hope of a better tomorrow and a better America"? It doesn't.
In honoring this famous son of his state, it's doubtful that the intention of Massachusetts's junior senator is to endorse the ugly causes that Du Bois promoted during his 95-year life. But for Kerry to overlook the Harvard-educated intellectual's fervent anti-Americanism, his membership in the Communist Party, his softness on Hitler, and his opposition to the NAACP's integrationist platform clearly shows a large blind spot the senator has for extremists on the Left. During the '04 presidential campaign, the Democrats' cozying-up to Michael Moore, Move On, and other fringe elements cost John Kerry. His resolution honoring someone who preached so many despicable views shows he has learned nothing.
Ironically, both the honoree and the politician paying homage to him are guilty of the same transgression: failing to identify evil when it appears at close range.
From communism to eugenics to racial separatism, W.E.B. Du Bois was wrong on just about every major issue he championed. His admirers in Congress are wrong too.
[For more on Kerry's support of Radical Icons, click here.]
Hanoi John supporting Commies? Nah, say it ain't so.
Glad to see Kerry is still authoring cutting edge, vital legislation.
So he wants to honor someone from HIS OWN Party. I agree, so what?
Shocked, I'm totally shocked. This guy just won't go away. God, how close were we to this guy being president....scary...
And the swift boat vets were a bunch of liars (Sarc).
Un___ blanking ___ believable!
It's frightening to think how close we came to having this guy as our president.
would one expect from this slime ball!
Both he AND W.E.B DuBois can kiss my harry white... Well, you know!
Weird, considering the paucity of Kerry-initiated legislation.
Kerry and his "... admirers in Congress are wrong too."
sounds like just the kind of person Dums idolize. They especially like that renouncing citizenship thing. why do you think so many of them threaten to leave the U.S if they don't get their way. Sadly, they never follow through on their threats.
I think it is time we stop just sitting by letting Democrats paint themselves as social heroes while making us look like the dregs of society. For the longest time they have said all sorts of things, with the only response from Republicans being silence (in public) and a lot of mumbling (in places like FR where basically it is like preaching to the choir). It is time to say something if you hear a workmate state a fallacy clothed as fact, to say something when a friend says how Hillary would be a great president, to speak up when Kerry tries to honor someone who is against everything America stands for! And the key to doing this is by facts, not going ape and starting an argument. Democrats cannot counter facts, but they can easily counter an angry Republican by saying 'I told you these guys are crazy.' But give them facts and they slink off like the lowly serpents (actually worm is a better term) that they are.
But we need to stop being silent, we need to talk more in the open (and not just to ourselves), and we need to do this without losing our tempers. The Democrats greatest weapon is their obfuscation. And darkness and shadow will always be chased away by light and truth. But we need to speak up, and we need to do so in a way that will be listened to.
Kerry urges Senate to honor fellow Communist
(I apologize in advance to anyone who I offended with my satirical comparison to Justice Clarence Thomas and Secretary of State Condi Rice. I didn't mean to cast aspersions on either Justice Thomas or Doctor Rice.)
Kerry should consider honoring Booker T. Washington, although he, unlike WEBD, was not from Massachesetts.
Let's see...A resolution honoring a commie. This must be F-in' Kerry's legislative program for 2005. Add this to the other 6 measures he authored over his previous 20 years in the Senate, and might actually break into a sweat this year.
If I remember right, the accomplishments of Kerry's 20 years as a Senator are most noted by his proposals for federal days off or Federal day name changes. He has really not done any real work in the Senate over 20 years. So this is the typical accomplishment he is famous for.
It's obviously a provocation. He's hoping the Republicans will oppose this bill so they can be accused of racism.
Many blacks have heard of Du Bois but don't really understand the meaning of his beliefs. They just know he was a noble black man, because that's probably what they were told in school.
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