What stinks about Washington (Buchanan's view about the Lott fiasco)

WorldNetDaily ^ | Dec. 13, 2002 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[FairOpinion]

"But the bleating of sheep only excites the gathering wolves, and the clamor grows for a full grovel, or resignation. What we are witnessing is the lynching of a good man who made a bad choice of words in a birthday tribute to an old man whose sins are no more scarlet than those of the rest of us. It stinks to heaven, but it is what passes for morality in Washington."

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He was an ancient among the boys of the Greatest Generation. Thirty-nine years old, a sitting judge at the time of Pearl Harbor, he resigned from the bench and volunteered for the 82nd Airborne, the bravest of the brave.

On D-Day, he crash-landed in a glider in France, hours before the Higgins boats hit the beach, and helped liberate Ste. Mere-Eglise. Days later, he was photographed driving a military vehicle that had lately been the property of the Third Reich. Decorated for wounds and valor, he was with the Army unit that liberated Buchenwald.

He was Lt. Col. J. Strom Thurmond. As governor of South Carolina in 1948, he was the nominee of the States Rights Party, the Dixiecrats who bolted Truman's Democratic party over civil rights. "Strom," as America would come to know him, carried only four states.

Elected to the Senate as a Democrat, he became the nation's most famous segregationist. For 23 hours, he filibustered the 1957 Civil Rights Act and stood with Barry Goldwater to vote "no" on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, bolted the party again and was crucial in leading the South into the Nixon camp at the Miami convention.

But as segregation died in Dixie, Strom adjusted. He courted black voters, hired black staffers, urged the nomination of black judges.

Last week, the grand old man was feted at a 100th birthday party at which the new majority leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, declared: "I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over these years, either."

The words were said in gracious tribute. But the malicious saw opportunity. Tom Edsall of the Washington Post dug up 54-year-old Thurmond quotes ("All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches"), then phoned around to elicit the "outrage" he had sought to incite. As ever, the left and a few neoconservatives were delighted to contribute.

"Oh, God," wailed William Kristol, whose old man, Irving, has not yet apologized for having been a Trotskyite two decades after Lenin and Trotsky began the extermination of Russian Christians.

David Frum, cashiered White House speechwriter, Jonah Goldberg of National Review and Andrew Sullivan piled on, parading their moral credentials by kicking Lott when he was down.

Al Gore, whose father voted with Strom to kill the Civil Rights Act of 1964, called Lott's tribute a "racist statement" and said he must resign. "It is not a small thing for one of the half-dozen most prominent political leaders in America to say that our problems are caused by integration and that we should have a segregationist candidate. ... That is divisive, and it is divisive along racial lines."

No, Al, it is you, with this malicious twisting of what Lott said and meant, who are mining the rich vein of racist politics. For keeping the races polarized and black folks believing Republicans want re-segregation, or worse, is how you "energize the base." In 2000, Gore suggested at a black church that what Bush meant by strict construction of the Constitution was to go back to when "some people were considered three-fifths of a human being."

Smelling blood, Jesse Jackson called for Lott's ouster. Lott, he said, "is an unrepentant Confederate who cannot speak for all Americans." But Trent Lott can surely speak for Mississippi. Who ever elected Rev. Jesse to speak for anybody?

"Lott's statement is the kind of callous, calculated, hateful bigotry that has no place in the halls of Congress. His remarks are dangerously divisive," said Kweisi Mfume of the NAACP, doing his best to deepen that division. Put Mfume's comment alongside Lott's and decide for yourself which manifests "hateful bigotry."

When Democratic leader Tom Daschle suggested that Lott meant no harm, Black Caucus Rep. Maxine Waters landed on him with both feet. A scorched Daschle hurriedly saw the light. Lott's words, he said, "were offensive to those who believe in freedom and equality."

Trying to stem the tide of venom coming his way, Lott offered an apology: "A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the discarded politics of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement."

But the bleating of sheep only excites the gathering wolves, and the clamor grows for a full grovel, or resignation. What we are witnessing is the lynching of a good man who made a bad choice of words in a birthday tribute to an old man whose sins are no more scarlet than those of the rest of us. It stinks to heaven, but it is what passes for morality in Washington.

[Bogolyubski]

Ulyanov (Lenin) was a Russian gentile - not a Christian. Trotsky (actual name Lev Bornstein) was a Jewish. Stalin (Yusif Djugozhvili) and Beria were Georgian. The communist regime, being atheist, specifically targeted Christians. Of the 29,000 Orthodox priests in Leningrad upon Stalin's rise, only about 60 remained after 5 years. Non-religious Jews flocked to communism in great numbers (Marx and Engels were both Jewish) throughout Russia and Europe. According to Israel Shashak, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, approximately 60 percent of Stalin's NKVD, who carried out the slaughter of millions in the 1930s, was Jewish in origin as was Kaganov, the official in charge of "collectivization" (extermination) of the Ukrainian Kulaks (approx. 8 million men, women, and children). Shashak, a religious Jew, was quite horrified to discover this while researching a book in the Soviet Union. The Ukraine was the only place in the world where the Nazi armies were cheered as liberators. Jews murdered or sent to the gulag by the communists include 1) fellow communists who Stalin viewed as a threat; and 2) religious Jews who objected to the atheism of the regime. After the founding of Israel, Stalin turned upon the Jews, began a new series of purges, set up a phony Jewish "homeland" (in Siberia), and contemplated his own "final solution" to Soviet Jewry. Mercifully he died before he was able to carry out the extermination plan.

Buchanan's problem is that he falls into the trap of holding all Jews responsible for the communist holocaust when the blame is justly ascribed to communists and their sympathizers, whether Jewish or Gentile. That said, Irving Kristol, the Sulzbergers (of the NY Times), Ted Turner and other leftists, Jewish or Gentile, who deny or minimize the Marxist holocaust do bear some moral responsibility.

[weikel]

Well, nobody can accuse Buchanan of not being conservative enough

Oh yeah.

[TLBSHOW]

God is not happy with the rights leaders at this time

[Willie Green]

but I have found some of his economic positions to be more in line with the left than the right.

On those issues where PJB offered a true America First! alternative, the globalist 'Rats and RINOs are in incestuous agreement.

Dubya and Algore were indistinguishable in their positions on global Klintonomics.

[JohnGalt]

In 1948 or 2002, what issue has more appeal to you?

Federal enforcement of property rights violation in the name of "racial justice" or repealing the New Deal?

Both Dewey and Truman ran as supporters of the New Deal; only Strom stood out in opposition. While its safe to say that like the 1860 election, I probably would have stayed home, I am not so arrogant as to say in 1948, despite the crudeness of Strom's message, that I would not have voted for him.

Dewey was not a Conservative on any issue, and Truman had worked in an Administration that had no problem putting American citizens in concentration camps. To let the media pretend that there is no merit to the issues and the personalities that were debated in 1948 is to let the liberal media tell you what is okay to think.

[junta]

He needed to say as well that the subhuman white racist disease on all humanity Strom Thurmond stopped lynching in South Carolina when he was govenor.

[junta]

paranoid kook adjust your tinfoil

[weikel]

Whether I would have voted for Strom( voting 3rd parties is futile so I wouldn't) this was an act of monumental stupidity on Lott's part.

[cynicom]

The bloodletters on FR after Lotts carcass will not read this nor make comment.

[The Irishman]

Thanks for the post. I'm glad to see Pat agrees with me on this.

Regards.

[PhilipFreneau]

His [Buchanan's] backers and detractors sure seem to feel he is far right, but I have found some of his economic positions to be more in line with the left than the right.

Or, maybe, the right has shifted left on economic and trade positions over the years. I seem to recall that in the early 1900's the free-traders were the progressives, and the protectionists were the conservatives. Anyone have historical research on this point?

[Captain Kirk]

I don't agree with Pat on this but you are being unfair. Pat loves to hate the neocons (and for good reason), regardless of their ethnicity or religious orientation.

[Captain Kirk]

That's sexual orientation.

[William McKinley]

That is true. Back in the days of McKinley and the days of Taft, the conservatives and the Republicans were the part of protectionism.

But there is something interesting- not only have conservatives moved to the other side of the issue, but so have progressives. Now it is the progressives and the unions they control who tend to favor protectionism. I have a theory as to why this switch occurred.

Why both sides have changed probably has a lot to do with the evolution of modern business conditions; the progressives have always been anti-capitalism and the conservatives pro-business. Back in the late 1800s and early to mid 1900s protectionism was pro-business (and as such opposed by those who wanted to destroy capitalism). Now, in the world made small due to technology, it is protectionism which can cripple business and has been adopted by the progressives.

I think that this fits, particularly when considering the case of Buchanan, staunch protectionist, who has said that unfettered capitalism is a fiercely destructive force.

[William McKinley]

The party of protectionism, I should have started with. Not the part.

[BillyBoy]

Bulls*** it and you probably know it.

The Republican Party attacked the New Deal since it's inception. They pledged year after year to stop it if they returned to power. The big split in the party was over FDR's FOREIGN policy-- the isolationist wing of the party wanted to bash FDR over that, whereas most of the party's nominees supported FDRs actions to actively support the Allied caused during the war.

The Dixiecrats meanwhile, had no objection to the New Deal at all. FDR won 90% of the vote or more in most southern states. FDR was a segregationist who supported Japanese internment, opposed cracking down on lynching, and kept the poll tax and the status quo. After Truman became President, he enacted the Fair Deal (a milder version of the New Deal), the Dixiecrats finally decided to break with him due to Truman desegregating the armed forces and succeeding in getting a civil rights plank in the '48 Democrat platform (which was missing from the previous platforms under FDR)

"For three long years the New Deal Administration has dishonored American traditions and flagrantly betrayed the pledges upon which the Democratic Party sought and received public support. The powers of Congress have been usurped by the President.The integrity and authority of the Supreme Court have been flouted. The rights and liberties of American citizens have been violated. Regulated monopoly has displaced free enterprise. The New Deal Administration constantly seeks to usurp the rights reserved to the States and to the people. It has insisted on the passage of laws contrary to the Constitution. It has intimidated witnesses and interfered with the right of petition. It has dishonored our country by repudiating its most sacred obligations. It has been guilty of frightful waste and extravagance, using public funds for partisan political purposes. It has promoted investigations to harass and intimidate American citizens, at the same time denying investigations into its own improper expenditures. It has created a vast multitude of new offices, filled them with its favorites, set up a centralized bureaucracy, and sent out swarms of inspectors to harass our people. It has bred fear and hesitation in commerce and industry, thus discouraging new enterprises, preventing employment and prolonging the depression. It secretly has made tariff agreements with our foreign competitors, flooding our markets with foreign commodities. It has coerced and intimidated voters by withholding relief to those opposing its tyrannical policies. It has destroyed the morale of our people and made them dependent upon government. Appeals to passion and class prejudice have replaced reason and tolerance. To a free people, these actions are insufferable. This campaign cannot be waged on the traditional differences between the Republican and Democratic parties. The responsibility of this election transcends all previous political divisions. We invite all Americans, irrespective of party, to join us in defense of American institutions."
--1936 REPUBLICAN Party Platform

"Wholly ignoring these great objectives, as solemnly declared by the people of the United States the New Deal Administration has for seven long years whirled in a turmoil of shifting, contradictory and overlapping administrations and policies. Confusion has reigned supreme. The only steady undeviating characteristic has been the relentless expansion of the power of the Federal government over the everyday life of the farmer, the industrial worker and the business man. The emergency demands organization, not confusion. It demands free and intelligent cooperation, not incompetent domination. It demands a change. The New Deal Administration has failed America. It has failed by seducing our people to become continuously dependent upon government, thus weakening their morale and quenching the traditional American spirit. It has failed by viciously attacking our industrial system and sapping its strength and vigor. It has failed by attempting to send our Congress home during the world's most tragic hour, so that we might be eased into the war by word of deed during the absence of our elected representatives from Washington. It has failed by disclosing military details of our equipment to foreign powers over protests by the heads of our armed defense. It has failed by ignoring the lessons of fact concerning modern, mechanized, armed defense. In these and countless other ways the New Deal Administration has either deliberately deceived the American people or proved itself incompetent any longer to handle the affairs of our government.The zero hour is here. America must prepare at once to defend our shores, our homes, our lives and our most cherished ideals. To establish a first line of defense we must place in official positions men of faith who put America first and who are determined that her governmental and economic system be kept unimpaired. Our national defense must be so strong that no unfriendly power shall ever set foot on American soil. To assure this strength our national economy, the true basis of America's defense, must be free of unwarranted government interference."
--1940 REPUBLICAN Party Platform

"Four more years of New Deal policy would centralize all power in the president, and would daily subject every act of every citizen to regulation by his henchmen, and this country could remain a republic only in name. No problem exists which cannot be solved by American methods. We have no need of either the communistic or fascist technique....The essential question at trial in this nation is whether men can organize together in a highly industrialized society, succeed, and still be free. That is the essential question at trial throughout the world today. In this time of confusion and strife, when moral values are being crushed on every side, we pledge ourselves to uphold the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the law of the land. We so pledge ourselves that the American tradition."
--1944 REPUBLICAN Party Platform

"We shall waste few words on the tragic lack of foresight and general inadequacy of those now in charge of the Executive Branch of the National Government; they have lost the confidence of citizens of all parties. Present cruelly high prices are due in large part to the fact that the government has not effectively used the powers it possesses to combat inflation, but has deliberately encouraged higher prices...In the past eighteen months, the Republican Congress, in the face of frequent obstruction from the Executive Branch, made a record of solid achievement. Here are some of the accomplishments of this Republican Congress: The long trend of extravagant and ill-advised Executive action reversed; the budget balanced; taxes reduced; limitation of Presidential tenure to two terms passed; elimination of the poll tax as a requisite to soldier voting;unification of the armed services launched...the maintenance of Federal finances in a healthy condition and continuation of the efforts so well started by the Republican Congress to reduce the enormous burden of taxation in order to provide incentives for the creation of new industries and new jobs, and to bring relief from inflation. We favor intelligent integration of Federal-State taxing and spending policies designed to eliminate wasteful duplication, and in order that the State and local governments may be able to assume their separate responsibilities, the Federal government shall as soon as practicable withdraw or reduce those taxes which can be best administered by local governments, with particular consideration of excise and inheritance tax...we shall say what we mean and mean what we say. In all of these things we shall primarily consult the national security and welfare of our United States. In all of these things we shall welcome the world's cooperation. But in none of these things shall we surrender our ideals or our free institutions."
--1948 REPUBLICAN Party Platform

"This election comes down to a critical choice between the American system of rugged individualism and the doctrines of paternalism and state socialism that is popular in Europe and espoused by Mr. Roosevelt and other Democrats"
--1932 Republican Party nominee Herbert Hooever

"Waste, inefficiency, and an antibusiness policy are impeding recovery...President Roosevelt's New Deal contains many dangerous elements...this is a battle to save the American system of government"
--1936 Republican Party nominee Alf Landon

"I used to be a Democrat when Democrats believed in states rights. Now the New Deal is nothing more but a bloated federal bureaucracy. We need to privatize many of these programs and return others to state control...the Tennessee Valley Authority, for instance, is a grievance example of flagrant violation of local interests"
--1940 Republican Party nominee Wendell Wilkie

"These tired old men have been conducting the nations affairs for twelve years. While we can build on some policies such as social security, much of it has been the most wasteful, extravegant, and incompetent administration in the nation's history."
--1944 & 1948 Republican Party nominee Thomas Dewey

[JohnGalt]

From http://www.lib.rochester.edu/rbk/Harken.htm where you can also see original sources of MSsr. Dewey. He was a Northeast big government Republican. Using party platforms to suggest that the figurehead represents the platform is laughable considering the 2000 GOP platform includes the abolishing of the Department of Education at the same time their nominee, Bush, bragged of wanting to expand the DOE.

"Dewey waged a campaign which was a model of consensus liberalism. Endorsing most of the New Deal's social legislation, and supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy - including participation in post-war international organizations - Dewey centered his criticisms almost entirely on the management of the New Deal and of the wartime economy.7 Rather than mounting a fundamental critique of New Deal liberalism, Dewey played firmly within the confines of the game - as delineated by Roosevelt and other New Deal liberals. Indeed, Dewey's acceptance of consensus liberalism in the '44 campaign was mirrored by his contributions to it during the course of his governorship.

Dewey's governorship, which spanned three four-year terms (1943-1955), was an exercise in consensus liberalism. Dewey's administration doubled state aid to education, built the Thruway, raised salaries for state employees, enacted rent-control laws, and passed the first state law in the nation to ban racial discrimination in employment.8 The governor's consensus liberalism was endorsed by New York voters, who returned him to office in 1946 by the largest margin in the state's history.9 Moreover, Dewey coupled a domestic policy of consensus liberalism with a foreign policy scarcely different from that of his Democratic opponents. While Dewey criticized Democratic foreign policy in the 1948 campaign, the criticisms were almost always rhetorical slaps at supposed Communist influence, rather than deep ideological criticisms of the policy. Indeed, Dewey and Truman agreed on the importance of a strong national defense, and the correctness of the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, and the recognition of Israel.10"

[BillyBoy]

So lemme get this straight. Dewey didn't attack the New Deal in the "right way" for you, therefore you'd vote for a bunch of Dixiecrats advocated LYNCHING laws? Hmmmm. Says something about your idea of "conservative".

The GOP vigorously attacked the New Deal throughout the 1930s and got no where. Democrats used to refer to Republicans as the "party of the rich" back then too, because anyone who wasn't on welfare or the government payroll used to hiss and boo FDR and call his bureaucracy as "alphabet soup". Wendell Wilkie, an Democrat-turned-Republican from Indiana (hardly the land of New England RINOs) vigorously bashed FDR over his anti-buisness policy (Wilkie owned an electric company) and pledged to privatize many New Deal programs, especially the Tennessee Valley Authority. He got no where among the supposed "states rights" south. The voted in lockstep for FDR and his big federal government. Dixiecrat Governors and their constituents were more than happy to support Franklin's reelection (as long as he continued to endorse segregation) Check out the 1940 election results in the deep south:

Georgia.....Roosevelt/Wallace (D) 265,194 84.81% votes
Alabama.....Roosevelt/Wallace (D) 250,726 85.22% votes
Mississippi......Roosevelt/Wallace (D) 95.70% votes
South Carolina....Roosevelt/Wallace (D) 95,470 95.63% votes

By the time of Dewey, the GOP got tired of losing year after year and yes, I suppose Dewey tried to act more complacent to attach swing voters. He continued to go after the New Deal, but obviously not in a manner "acceptable" to you. The party as a whole controlled congress in '48, and their record speaks for itself (they WOULDN'T pass Truman's big government agenda, hence he went after them as the "do nothing" 80th Congress. In fact, most the Midwestern Republicans in congress were to the right of the already conservative party platform)

I am well aware of party history, my family was conservative, and quite frankly, never supported FDR or any of his agenda (more than I can say for the Dixiecrats). It is you who is ignorant. GraniteStateConservative posted the Dixiecrat platform in it's entirety

You knock Dewey for not attacking the New Deal in the "right way", yet the supposed "conservative" Dixiecrats didn't offer ANY critism of the New Deal in their platform. As he noted, it "had NOTHING to do with lowering taxes or reducing government spending." (Most of the south was heavily blue-collar at that time and supported the idea of labor union goons and "taxing the rich", not to mention giveaway programs for the working poor) Half the platform is spent praising the virtues of segregation and lynching.

Conservative Republicans like Coolidge used to easily win the black vote. Then racists like you decided to rewrite history and promote garbage like that. The Strom Thurmond of 1948 was far more quasi-libertarian than any kind of traditional "conservative", and your screen name (Ann Rayd was a pro-abortion athetist) most likely attests to that.

[A Vast RightWing Conspirator]

Someone previously pointed out that Pat is virtually alone among conservative pundits in defending Lott. I replied that says more about Pat than it says about conservatives.

I agree. Many who used to call themselves 'conservatives' no longer do so. Since the amoral (really socialist)neocons polluted the meaning, 'conservative' is more a stigma than a badge of honor. Very much the way 'gay' has long lost all the funny conotations - which explains the 'gay conservative' Sullivan actually judging and measuring others' moral weight.

Hey, if the 'victims' of whatever want to stay victims for the rest of their vicitimized lives and for many generations to come, nothing can stop them and no one but a psychiatrist could even begin to try to help them.

I believe history documents how the Turks or Muslims did bad things to some of my ancestors a few generations ago - like taking some of their children and turning them into Muslims and slaves. And, you know what? I couldn't care less if some Turk has a fantasy, recalling the good old days of the Ottoman empire, which is what many Turks do these days.