Posted on 12/30/2002 5:39:35 PM PST by asneditor
Displaying a virtuosity that would have impressed George Orwell, the Democrats and their minions in the media have transformed segregation and racism into a Republican product.
Typical of this effort is the Los Angeles times column by Harold Meyerson. Meyerson asserts that Sen. Trent Lott's inane remark about Strom Thurmond "uncovered an entire history that the Republicans would greatly prefer to keep under wraps."
Meyerson goes further, saying that the GOP "would rather not be reminded of its origins." In reality -- in case anyone in the media cares about reality -- the "origins of the Republican Party were just fine as far as race is concerned. The GOP came into existence because the Whigs, the only contemporary party opposing the Democrats, were too timid to take a stand against slavery and secession. The party's first presidential candidate was Abraham Lincoln who, as the saying used to go, "freed the slaves." In fact, Lincoln was the reason that blacks, up until Roosevelt built his coalition, voted overwhelmingly Republican, except in the South, of course, where Democratically controlled state governments prevented them from voting at all.
But it didn't stop with Lincoln. There are more recent and more relevant points that expose the lie that links the Republican Party's to racism and segregation. For decades, the Southern tier of states was known as the Solid South because they voted solidly Democratic. In most of those states, if a politician won the Democratic primary it was tantamount to winning the election because the Republican presence was so feeble. So unless we're to believe that segregation -- separate waiting rooms, drinking fountains, schools and restaurants -- was the law in Boston and New York, it was the Democrats in the South that established segregation.
In fact, the civil rights movement of the 1960's, which saw many people from the Republican northern states challenge the authorities in Dixie, was a crusade to dismantle a system created and maintained by Democratic state legislators. The names associated with that struggle still resonate -- Orval Faubus, Ross Barnett, George Wallace, Bull Connor. The fire hoses and vicious dogs that were turned on civil rights marchers were in Democratic hands, not Republicans.
But even before the main thrust of the civil rights movement took hold, in 1957, there was a Federal court order mandating desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Four black children showed up to attend the school and a Democrat governor turned out his state's National Guard. Soldiers in full battle dress, equipped with rifles and bayonets bravely held out against the four black children.
Those kids might never have seen the inside of Little Rock's Central High School if it hadn't been for a Republican president who nationalized the state National Guard and sent in Federal troops to ensure the court orders were obeyed by the Democratic government of Arkansas. It was Democratic -- not Republican -- governors who stood in the schoolhouse door and cried, "Never!"
And, it's worth noting, they are still standing in the schoolhouse door crying never only now it's to prevent black and low-income kids from escaping the public schools by obtaining a voucher to attend a better, private school. Now, of course, the issue is not race but subservience to the teacher unions. But the effect is similar. It is minority children that suffer the consequences of this sellout to the unions.
The 1960s also saw passage of the landmark Civil Right Act of 1964 -- a bill that would not have passed but for Republican support. Meyerson notes that a majority of Republican senators voted for the bill but again, with considerable rhetorical skill -- uses that against the GOP but telling us that Republican congressman Tom DeLay "hastens to point out" that fact. Somehow, DeLay reminding us of the Republican role nullifies it.
Meyerson even resurrects Willie Horton, the black killer who was furloughed from prison by Democratic Gov. Mike Dukakis of Massachusetts. Dukakis' furloughing of Horton, who went on to kill while on furlough, was used against him in his presidential campaign against the first George Bush in 1992.
Meyerson's point seem te be that folks don't mind being killed by furloughed white convicts but if a governor furloughs a black convict who kills, voters will vote against him.
Harold is so determined to smear the GOP he tweaks history just a bit. He attributes the Willie Horton ad to Lee Atwater, the political operative who ran Bush's presidential campaign. In fact, the Horton ad first appeared in the Democratic primary. And, it was an independent group, not the Bush campaign and not the Republican Party, that used it against Dukakis in the general election.
We can look for this campaign to brand the GOP the party of racial segregation to continue right up until election day 2004. Republican voters should hope that their party leadership and their candidates have the moxie to label these charges as lies. The time for euphemisms is past.
The historical fact is that Democrats invented segregation, Democratic states spawned the KKK and the lynch mob and to say otherwise is a lie.
Aside from Cuba which was no stranger to slavery to begin with, the rest was an unlikely long shot at best. Try again.
Aside from Cuba which was no stranger to slavery to begin with, the rest was an unlikely long shot at best. Try again.
Sorry. You try again. And read some history. I recommend "Battle Cry of Frreedom" by Dr. James McPherson. It won the Pullitzer prize. Pay special attention to Chapter 3: "An Empire for Slavery.":
"During 1856 hundreds of would-be planters took up land grants in Nicaragua. In August, Pierre Soule himself arrived in Walker's capital and negotiated a loan for him from New Orleans bankers. The "grey- eyed man of destiny," as the press now described Walker, needed this kind of help. His revolution was in trouble. The other Central American countries had formed an alliance to overthrow him. They were backed by Cornelius Vanderbilt, whom Walker had angered by siding with an anti-Vanderbilt faction in the Accessory Transit Company. The president of Nicaragua defected to the enemy, whereupon Walker installed himself as president in July 1856. The Pierce administration withdrew its diplomatic recognition. Realizing that southern backing now represented his only hope, Walker decided "to bind the Southern States to Nicaragua as if she were one of themselves," as he later put it. On September 22, 1856, he revoked Nicaragua's 1824 emancipation edict and legalized slavery again.
This bold gamble succeeded in winning southern support. "No movement on the earth" was as important to the South as Walker's, proclaimed one newspaper. "In the name of the white race," said another, he "now offers Nicaragua to you and your slaves, at a time when you have not a friend on the face of the earth." The commercial convention meeting at Savannah expressed enthusiasm for the "efforts being made to introduce civilization in the States of Central America, and to develop these rich and productive regions by the introduction of slave labor."
-- "Battle Cry of Freedom" pp.113-114 by James McPherson
I think you know all this, you'd just rather push Soviet style disinformation.
Walt
So you finally come out and made an excuse for the slave power.
Good for you to be so honest.
Walt
Article III of the Louisiana Purchase treaty said the following:
The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights and advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the mean time they shall be maintained and protected in the enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.
There were slaves, considered property at that time, throughout the whole length of the Mississippi Valley in 1803. They didn't have liberty. The treaty would seem to give their owners the right to settle with their slave property anywhere in the Louisiana territory.
How did Lincoln and the 1820 Missouri Compromise get around this treaty?
I've lived in South Mississippi for 20 years. While in the military from '61 - '82, my family and I lived pretty much in a cross-section of the country; ie, West and East Coasts (CA, WA, VA, MA, SC, FL, RI), New Orleans, St. Paul, Chicago, amoung others. I've seen much more racism in such cities as Chicago, St. Paul and Boston than on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Whites and blacks get along better and work well together a hell of a lot better down here than "up there". In Chicago, whites still beat blacks with baseball bats for walking in certain neighborhoods. Just to keep this light....for our Canadian friends, that's the same as a "neighbourhood". : )
Thanks but no thanks. $11.99 is way too much to pay for a role of Soviet-quality toilet paper.
It won the Pullitzer prize.
So did Maureen Dowd for that matter. In fact, I'm not so sure I consider getting a prize named after history's most famous yellow journalist to be very honorable at all.
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