Posted on 01/02/2005 2:33:24 PM PST by OOPisforLiberals
"Left means never having to say you're sorry?" I beg to differ, they are sorry alright.
The South had been Democratic since Reconstruction. It was Democratic during Jim Crow; it was Democratic during the 60s. Painting racists in the South as "conservative" is a bit of a stretch, to say the least.
They may have been "conservative" in the sense of sharing certain values with modern conservatives, but that's a bit like saying that Iranian mullahs are just like American conservatives in that they oppose gay marriage.
Not really. I don't recall any attempt to "read them out" of the conservative movement for violating its principles, as WF Buckley did for the John Birch society. The AFL-CIO similarly "read out" Communist-dominated unions.
Movement conservatives were generally perfectly happy to work alongside southern racists in pursuit of common goals.
read
These people who profess to believe that everything is random and that Pat Robertson has no right to force his "hang ups" on others but can't see their own hypocrisy must be the stupidest people on earth. Intellectuals indeed!
I pretty much agree with you on the above, especially your remark that racist conservatives are in violation of their principles. In fact they are actually behaving like leftists by identifying people as members of a group rather than as individuals.
But I do think that most "conservatives" have left racism behind, which is a form of "coming to terms" with it.
I have an artist friend who thinks the same way. It's a gross contradiction, IMO, since true leftist thinking comes close to requiring the kind of lockstep thinking that the writer deplores.
My opinion is that many who call themselves "liberals" embrace the contradiction at least in part because the word "liberal," with its allusion to liberty, seduces them.
I absolutely agree with your first part. But they get no credit for this, and are generally viewed by their opponents as wanting to reinstate Jim Crow, but just realizing that it isn't possible.
Which is why I disagree with your second part. "Coming to terms" would involve publicly recognizing that they were wrong in the past.
Although I really hate to lend support to any further orgy of apologizing.
No, they weren't. The South was dominated by the Democrat Party until the early 1980s. The so-called "conservatives" you malign were Democrats. They may not have been as socially liberal as today's Democrats, but they were still Democrats. And "conservatives" had no goals in the South that hinged on appeasing Southern racists at all.
To equate "conservative" Democrats of the 1960s with the conservative Republicans of today is a nice rhetorical trick. Unfortunately, it doesn't wash. Why? Because the ideals of republican conservatism are not identical with conservative ideals simply stated.
[i]mark[/i] Very good, thank you for posting. The most bigotted people I know are liberal friends who speak out vociferously against the War. Spittle and everything - it's nasty.
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