Posted on 12/24/2002 1:09:54 AM PST by goldstategop
TRENCHANT (I HOPE) COMMENTS ON THE LOTT AFFAIR By Don Feder December 22, 2002
At the outset, please note the following:
1) I am no fan of Trent Lott. As Senate Majority Leader, Lott was an unprincipled pragmatist. So much so, that when he first became majority leader, DC conservatives produced buttons proclaiming: Lott For Sale, Will Build to Specifications. At the height of the current manufactured crisis, the Mississippi invertebrate went of Black Entertainment Television to plead that he now supports affirmative action (racial quotas) across board. That declaration was more profoundly racist than anything the Senator said at Strom Thurmonds birthday party. In many ways, Lott does indeed represent everything thats wrong with the Republican Party lack of purpose, lack of courage, at times, even lack of consciousness though not in the way his critics charged.
2) Segregation was evil. To tell a man that he cant use a public restroom or that he has to sit in the back of a bus, -- to bar his admission to a public school or university -- on the basis of skin color is loathsome.
3) Had I voted in the 1948 election, it would not have been for Thurmond or Thomas Dewey, for that matter. I would have supported Harry Truman, one of the few Democratic presidents I admire (along with Andrew Jackson). If not for Give Em Hell Harry, we might have lost the Cold War at the outset. Truman also integrated the armed forces, another courageous move.
Enough disclosure. Lotts resignation highlights a profound double-standard regarding racism. I doubt Lotts opponents really believe his dumb remark reflects ingrained, or even visceral, racism, or a desire to return to the era of Jim Crow. But America now has a racial sensitivity Gestapo that pulls out its truncheons at the slightest sign of hostility real or imagined -- toward people of color.
Of course, the reverse is not the case. Black grudge-bearers are free to condemn whites as a race, to say virtually anything about them, however vile and unjust, and to support policies (quotas, reparations) that are manifestly racist designed to punish people for an accident of birth. And Democrats are free to race-bait to their hearts content, a tactic almost as reprehensible as racism itself.
You think Trent Lotts awful?
You know what Lott didnt do? He didnt refer to New York City as Hymie-Town and complain that Jews are always whining about the Holocaust. He didnt call Judaism a gutter religion. He didnt spark a race riot in Crown Heights that led to the death of a young man or organize the picket of a white-owned business that resulted in the deaths of five (all minorities). He didnt write a poem about Jews blowing up the World Trade Center.
He didnt try to justify the thugs who burned down a large part of South Central LA in 1992 by calling their crimes a spontaneous reaction to a lot of injustice and a lot of alienation and frustration. Oh, and he didnt suggest that George Bush had foreknowledge of Sept 11, but did nothing to prevent it so his business friends could profit from a war on terrorism.
In case youre curious, those laurels go to Jesse Jackson, Louis Farakhan, Al Sharpton, New Jersey Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka (the artist formerly known as LeRoi Jones), Congress-creature Maxine Waters and soon-to-be-former Congress-cretin Cynthia McKinney. But dont hold your breath waiting for any of them to be taken to the woodshed.
An unspoken assumption of our culture is that its racist (or insensitive, at the very least) to criticize a black person. Thus if I observe that Jackson is an opportunistic jerk a person of limited intelligence and low morals in the establishments eyes, my views must be shaped by racial animosity. (The more unscrupulous black leaders invariably exploit this assumption.) Thus it would seem that prominent blacks suffering from foot-in-mouth disease are to be the exception to Martin Luther Kings dictum that Americans should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
Democrats passionately embrace the accountability double standard. Republicans meekly acquiesce.
When it was disclosed last year that the Reverend Jackson had fathered a child out-of-wedlock and used his influence to engage in corporate shakedowns, President Bush called the race hustler par excellence to commiserate. In the 2000 election, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Al Gore each made a pilgrimage to Sharptons Harlem headquarters to kiss his ring.
Black-on-white crimes are roughly ten times as prevalent as white-on-black offenses. How many of the former are hate crimes is anyones guess. Surely the anti-white racism that pervades our culture (the idea that whites as a race are responsible for black suffering) -- encouraged by the liberal elite and black race-baiters plays a part in these crimes.
The Democratic Party, the media and groups like the NAACP are avid proponents of racial quotas in education and hiring. Cut through the rhetoric and murky reasoning in defense of these vile programs and its clear that they penalize or reward solely on the basis of race. Whats worse to praise a form of racism long dead (if in fact thats what Lott did), or to support a virulent strain of racism thats alive and kicking?
For admissions to the University of Michigan, whose affirmative action program will soon be before the Supreme Court, race (minority status) counts for more than a perfect SAT score combined with an excellent essay. To tell a man or woman that they wont get in to an elite school even though theyre bright, studious and creative because they also happen to be white (or Asian) is a species of racism every bit as ugly as get-to-the-back-of-the-bus or whites-only restrooms.
Although still just a sick notion (whereas affirmative action is a sick reality), reparations is racism writ large. It seeks to hold todays (largely white) taxpayers responsible for the racial sins of the past. Its a giant rip-off scheme, favored primarily by the least responsible black leaders who believe theyll be the ones to divvy the loot and the loopier white liberals (which, come to think of it, might be a redundancy).
Race-baiting is almost as bad as racism. At this the Democrats excel. It is for them mothers milk.
You may recall that during the 1998 election, the Missouri Democratic party ran ads which said, in effect, if Republicans win, more black churches will go up in flames. (Newsflash: Newt Gingrich was seen fleeing the scene of a burning black church, a can of kerosene in hand.)
Former felon-in-chief, William Jefferson Clinton (who actually believes he was born a poor black child) used the Lott fiasco to pontificate that Republicans are the second coming of the White Citizens Councils.
In the last election, Republican gains in the South were due to racist appeals to white voters, Clinton opined. How do they think they got a majority in the South, anyway? I think what they (Republicans) are really upset about is that he (Lott) made public their strategy.
This from a leader of the party that has its own unspoken strategy to do whatever it takes to monopolize the black vote, including terrifying black voters with lurid visions of Republicans seeking to disenfranchise them, reestablish segregated lunch counters, and send them back to the plantations in chains. Simultaneously, Democrats strenuously oppose those measures that have the best chance of ameliorating the condition of urban blacks including education vouchers.
Soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi have intimated that its now up to congressional Republicans to prove that they arent a bunch of cross-burners by supporting affirmative action, a general expansion of welfare programs and DC statehood -- in other words, to embrace racism to prove that they arent racists.
And so, as we rejoice in the political demise of the villainous Lott, we can all congratulate ourselves on this historic victory over racism. Meanwhile the most prevalent racism in America camouflaged as compassion, justice or sensitivity -- is either tolerated or celebrated. Ah, well.
Seriously again, WHY ARE YOU HERE?
Don't bring that weak crap to the house.
Birth of Tha SYNDICATE, the philosophical heir to William Lloyd Garrison.
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.
If you would have stated it like you did here, there wouldn't have been such an objection.
No chasers here. 120-proof.
Ya heard?
Birth of Tha SYNDICATE, the philosophical heir to William Lloyd Garrison.
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.
Yes, I often wondered how anyone could sign on and defend vigorously the BOR during those times..
It flies directly in the face of our Constitution and we weren't truly honoring our Constitution (hell, we weren't even accepting it's words at face value) until these practices were brought to an end.
I couldn't be proud of our document under such circumstances. I don't know how anyone could.
Trenty, otoh.. that was a nothing more than a political lynching. And I think everyone knows it on some level.
Sorry, pal, you're so very wrong.
BWAHAHHA!!
I can't believe someone said this.
I bet they had these assholes all through history.. I can just hear them now: "Oh, shut up and stop crying for your dead kid.. You're always whining about the Herod thing. Geeez.."
I don't even know how to reason with people like this.
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