The New Race-based McCarthyism: Discovering Republican Racists... Everywhere...

The Iconcoclast ^ | December 18, 2002 | Murray Soupcoff (The Iconoclast)

[clintonbaiter]

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The New Race-based McCarthyism: Discovering Republican Racists... Everywhere...



December 18, 2002: Trent Lott's ill-advised comments at Strom Thurmond's birthday party, praising Strom's Dixie-loving, civil-rights hating 1948 tilt at the presidential windmills, were not exactly an example of enlightened civility as far as the targets of Mr. Thurmond's campaign to restore the glorious heritage of the Confederacy -- including separate drinking fountains for black folks, "colored" washrooms and stress-relieving vigilante lynchings of uppity "nigrahs" -- might be concerned. In this author's opinion, black Americans have every right to suspiciously wonder whether they were seeing the real Trent Lott (if there is one under that silly hairpiece of his) as he, in his own inimitable words, "winged it" on the occasion of celebrating Strom Thurmond's hundredth year on this planet.

However, now that we've got that observation out of the way, let's get right to today's theme. And that is the left-lib crowd's increasing proclivity to play the "race-card" by smearing their enemies with a dose of race-based McCarthyism. We're talking about ferreting out alleged "racists' in every nook and cranny of the American Republic -- but almost always in the inner sanctums of the Republican Party and the conservative opposition (white and black) to today's hairbrained, America-hating left-lib "civil-rights" stratagems.

How far will the chattering classes go in distorting reality to discover new "right-wing racists" and black "Uncle Toms" to chastise and excommunicate from public life. Well, take a look at today's Inside Politics column by Greg Pierce in the Washington Times. Here's how Mr. Pierce puts it:

In the upside-down world of People for the American Way, a vote for a black Supreme Court justice apparently is evidence of racism.

The liberal group, taking advantage of Sen. Trent Lott's troubles, put out a press release yesterday purporting to show that potential successors to Mr. Lott of Mississippi have voted to "undermine civil rights protections." The evidence? Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell and Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles voted in favor of Clarence Thomas' nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991.

That was just one of what PFAW described as "16 key civil rights votes over the past 20 years" in which the above-named Republicans almost always failed to vote the liberal way. It included such issues as racial quotas in federal contracting, in which, of course, those opposed to discrimination are deemed to be foes of civil rights.

Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist and Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum were included in the scorecard, although they could not be denounced for supporting Mr. Thomas, since they were not in the Senate at that time. However, they could be rebuked for such anti-civil rights sins as voting for John Ashcroft for attorney general.

"These dismal voting records make it clear that the Republican Party's civil rights problem is far broader and deeper than Trent Lott," PFAW President Ralph G. Neas said.

Voting for a black jurist of integrity such as Clarence Thomas is a racist act, and a civil rights problem "far broader and deeper than Trent Lott?" Gimme a break! What have the loopy denizens of the contemporary civil-rights establishment been smoking lately? Their mission -- to eliminate any vestiges of the tolerant, color-blind society that Martin Luther King dreamed of (and a dream that is now close to becoming a reality) and replace it with an inegalitarian, race-based Orwellian nightmare of government-imposed racial quotas in education, racial gerrymandering at the ballot box, racial favoritism in federal and municipal contracting, and stigmatizing any black person who makes it by virtue of his own talent and ambitious energy -- is sheer foolishness.

It's a prescription for more racial divisiveness in America, more white resentment, more black economic underachievement and poverty, and even more hopelessness in the deteriorating slums which the contemporary liberators of the black underclass seem determined to condemn them to forever........................

[clintonbaiter]

The Democrats would prefer to have one of their own be Republican Senate Majority Leader. What a conniving, Machiavelean bunch!

[Sabertooth]

We will come out of this stronger than before. The problem with Lott is that what he said was indefensible.

The Democrats will have much less success spinning old voting records. Once Lott steps down, the public's distaste for spin will manifest in a week or three.

[driftless]

I don't know if too many people on this forum remember the days when civil rights was THE issue. Back in the sixties the activists argued that we must have a color-blind society where people would be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King. So then we should all try to be color-blind today right?

Well no say todays race-hustlers, today we have to judge people by the color of their skin because we don't have "a level playing field". The fact is there never was and never will be a level playing field...for anyone. A poor Black person in Detroit is hardly any more economically disadvantaged than some white hillbilly in Appalachia.

But the joker in the deck is that todays activists do not desire a level playing field because how would they be able to rip off the rich and powerful. For the race-hustlers there must always be a class of "victims"... helpless pawns in the hustlers quest for their own wealth and power. They make up the rules of the race game and decide who is a racist and who is not. They should look in the mirror.

[ckilmer]

While there is much talk as to where Lott was coming from when he made his statement. (He was imitating a dixicrat of the late 1940's to honor an old warrior of a lost cause.) There is little talk of who he was talking to. That stubborn tone of an old dixicrat that Lott assumed was one you just don't hear in the south anymore. The reason you don't hear it--is because it is directed at Northern (damned) Yankees (the Northerners who defeated the South in the civil war)...a people the Southerners now considers to be--and rightly so--a defeated people. Nor was the defeat of the Northern Yankees at the hands of Southerners.

This is also why lott's words were indefensible. He exposed a lot of people.

[republicman]

I remember calling it "racial McCarthyism" even before Horowitz coined the term. The ability to even speak on matters of race without fear of retribution ended years ago.

But seeing judge Thomas's picture reminds me of the real problem. When Thomas was under fire the repubs defended him and the public sided with him.

The new republican party after being backlashed by impeachment has turned into utter wimps constantly trying to prove they can be democrats too.

Lott's practically saying that he was a racist on BET and that he will behave more like a democrat from now on, was the cherry on the wimp cake.

For all those who thought a republican congress would fix the senate and stop Bush from signing all sorts of liberalism into law, as they say in NY, faggedaboutit!

[cicero's_son]

The spirit of the Inquisition and the Salem trials thrives in the modern age. For true conservatives, who understand that there is no "progress" in human nature, this should come as no surprise.

Liberals, on the other hand, might be shocked to realize that it is they who are playing the roles of Torquemada and Stoughton.

In America today, every manner of sexual perversion and personal moral shortcoming is eminently forgivable--to the extent that forgiveness is even required. When it comes to a sin against the new Religion of Values promulgated by the Left, however, nothing but an extended, public Auto da Fe will suffice.

We all know how the Auto da Fe ended, right?

[dalebert]

I don't know any racist Republican. I do know a lot of Republicans who want the constiturion upheld and laws obeyed. Not so about the Dems I know. They want the constituion and laws to fit their whims.

[Fury]

Thanks for a sensible post!

[republicman]

When it comes to a sin against the new Religion of Values promulgated by the Left, however, nothing but an extended, public Auto da Fe will suffice.

It's remarkable that the leftist have always cast themselves as anti-authority with "question authority" bumper stickers abound. Yet now they are in charge. They are now the "authority" that should be "questioned".

Liberals, on the other hand, might be shocked to realize that it is they who are playing the roles of Torquemada and Stoughton.

And the pigs in Orwell's animal farm.

Sadly I don't see an end in sight. Parodoxically as we move further from slavery and Jim Crow, the alleged raison de etre, the stronger political correctness becomes.