Andrew Sullivan on the Big Switch:
No. The parties didn't "switch" after 1964.
Republicans (and some Democrats) passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act against Democrat resistance (just as Republicans passed civil rights legislation twice during Eisenhower's administration, against fierce Democrat opposition).
Over the next decade or two, segregation receded as a major factor in politics in the South (the South voted for Jimmy Carter-- no racist he-- in 1976.) As race became less of an issue, and social policy and economic policy came to the forefront, southerners (with a big influx of population from the North) became more Republican, as the party fit their views on non-racial matters better than the Democrats did.
What remained the same after 1964 was race-baiting. The Democrat party for most of its history was fervently anti-black. Slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, segregation, lynching were all Democrat policies. But it would be wrong, I think, to describe the essence of Democrat racial policy as anti-black, although that was certainly the form it took for most of the Party's history.
What the Democrat Party is and always have been is race-baiters. Democrats use racial hate and fear for political purposes. It is what links Nathan Bedford Forrest and the KKK and George Wallace and Lester Maddox and Bull Connor with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama. They use race to advance Democrat politics. Democrats have had no hesitation to stir racial animosity-- even violence, which could happen if Obama loses-- if it serves the interests of the Democrat Party.
You can add Andrew Sullivan to that list of race-baiters.
I think America is currently in a Cold Civil War. The parties, of course, have switched sides since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The party of the Union and Lincoln is now the Democratic party. The party of the Confederacy is now the GOP. And racial polarization is at record levels, with whites entirely responsible for reversing Obama's 2008 inroads into the old Confederacy in three Southern states. You only have to look at the electoral map in 1992 and 1996, when Clinton won, to see how the consolidation of a Confederacy-based GOP and a Union-based Democratic party has intensified - and now even more under a black president from, ahem, Illinois.
No. The parties didn't "switch" after 1964.
Republicans (and some Democrats) passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act against Democrat resistance (just as Republicans passed civil rights legislation twice during Eisenhower's administration, against fierce Democrat opposition).
Over the next decade or two, segregation receded as a major factor in politics in the South (the South voted for Jimmy Carter-- no racist he-- in 1976.) As race became less of an issue, and social policy and economic policy came to the forefront, southerners (with a big influx of population from the North) became more Republican, as the party fit their views on non-racial matters better than the Democrats did.
What remained the same after 1964 was race-baiting. The Democrat party for most of its history was fervently anti-black. Slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, segregation, lynching were all Democrat policies. But it would be wrong, I think, to describe the essence of Democrat racial policy as anti-black, although that was certainly the form it took for most of the Party's history.
What the Democrat Party is and always have been is race-baiters. Democrats use racial hate and fear for political purposes. It is what links Nathan Bedford Forrest and the KKK and George Wallace and Lester Maddox and Bull Connor with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama. They use race to advance Democrat politics. Democrats have had no hesitation to stir racial animosity-- even violence, which could happen if Obama loses-- if it serves the interests of the Democrat Party.
You can add Andrew Sullivan to that list of race-baiters.
Among sane people, Andrew Sullivan just restates what everybody knows.
ReplyDeleteAmong the insane, it's another matter.
According to a recent AP Poll, 79% of Republicans express racial prejudice, compared to 32% of Dems.
ReplyDeleteCase closed.
-KW
Screwey internet poll gives obviously partisan result.
DeleteRepublicans are racists.
QED.
Seems in kind with your other opinions, KW.
Perhaps this tidbit, coming from the Heritage Foundation, might knock some sense into our amateur historian.
ReplyDelete"Buckley and the magazine did not acquit themselves as well on the issue of civil rights, taking a rigid states’ rights position that equaled, in the eyes of many liberals and almost all black Americans, a stand in favor of segregation and therefore racism. In his articles and editorials, Buckley clearly rejected the politics of Southern racists like Ross Barnett of Mississippi and George Wallace of Alabama, but he also argued that the federal enforcement of integration was worse than the temporary continuation of segregation. Consistent with the conservative principle of federalism, he favored voluntary gradual change by the states.
"But Mississippi was burning, and freedom riders were being murdered. “You are either for civil rights or against them,” declared blacks who did not see a dime’s worth of difference between Wallace and Buckley. As a result of National Review’s above-the-fray philosophizing and Barry Goldwater’s vote, on constitutional grounds, against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the albatross of racism was hung around the neck of American conservatism and remained there for decades and even to the present.
In a panel discussion in October 2005 marking NR’s 50th anniversary, liberal commentator Jeff Greenfield asked Buckley whether he regretted his own and the magazine’s resistance to the civil rights movement. Yes, the 80-year-old Buckley replied. He realized that, in retrospect, he and his colleagues were relying too much on normal political processes as outlined in the Constitution to fully incorporate blacks into American public life. Many Southern states, he admitted, simply did not permit blacks to participate."
Anon:
DeleteYou misrepresent Goldwater's stance here.
Goldwater strongly supported and voted for the Republican 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts (which were strongly opposed by Democrats). He voted against the 1964 Act on libertarian grounds-- he fully supported integration, but did not believe that the Constitution granted the federal government the power to force it on the states. It was and remains a respectable opinion. Goldwater was no racist. He was a member of the Arizona NAACP and desegrated the Arizona National Guard.
As for Buckley's opposition, I don't know enough of the details, but I know that some of it was also based on libertarian grounds.
Buckley was far more supportive of civil rights than were a large portion of the Democrat Party, who fought it ferevently.
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ReplyDeleteBut guys, don't you understand? If Egnor just says it 5 more times, it will magically become true!
ReplyDeleteBoo
If the Union is represented by progressives like the Obama administration, then I say 'Hurrah for the bonnie blue flag".
ReplyDeleteOf course it is nonsense in that respect.
I will agree with Mr Sullivan in one respect: The US is fighting a cold civil war... and it does bear a striking resemblance in geography and a few of the core issues with the last one (19th century).
Much like the last civil war, states rights play a big role. The GOP candidates want to give power to the states, the Dems want power focused federally. This is somewhat of a reversal perhaps. Or it could be that the GOP is more or less static on it's view of the reach of federal power and feels that reach has gone too far, and that the Democrats have leapfrogged the GOP position for some reason.
Either way there has been a plate shift on the left, and a tremor on the right.
Just like the last civil war the nation is split in 'red and blue' geographically along similar lines. The South, Texas, and Mid West seem to be on a different moral page than the urbanite North East and Left coast. This far I am with Sullivan, but only this far.
The huge modern moral issue that haunts these debates like some elephant in the room is not some phoney 'race card' used to distract and / or threaten. Rather the issue that is only preached to the respective choirs and that gets the drum beating is of the sanctity of life and the value of culture and tradition. This election is not about the need to recognize black people as humans with citizens rights - that has been achieved.
The modern struggle is to recognize the unborn, the elderly, the mentally handicapped, the disabled, and the weak are humans with rights too.
The modern 'abolitionists' are mostly southern - only this time around they are called 'pro life' or 'pro family'.
We cannot call this a reversal, as NEITHER side of your last civil war would have countenanced abortion on demand, 'assisted suicide', 'pathways' to death, infanticide, and the 'right' to promiscuity. Also the (brand new) GOP was then an abolitionist party, and is now the pro life party. In this the GOP has been consistent politically, if not geographically.
There are many other issues that divide: Foreign policy, religious rights, freedom of speech, kill lists, the right to bear arms, and of course 'the economy'. These are all very important issues. None hits so deeply at an emotional level as that of LIFE. People, like me, who believe abortion is murder will broach no compromise.
We will win the day, just as Wilberforce and Lincoln did.
Love and good ALWAYS eventually conquer evil... if it does not destroy itself first.
Good luck on the 6th, America.
You will get what you deserve as a nation.
I, for one, pray it is a renaissance and not a slide into decline.
crusadeREX- The GOP wants to give power to the states? Refresh my memory, which party created the Department of Homeland Security?
ReplyDeleteBoo
Anon,
ReplyDeleteYou have a very valid point, there.
If I am not mistaken the DHS was approved by all branches and houses of government in response to 9/11?
When did Obama repeal or dissolve it?
I was under the impression the DHS is still quite active - recently in the procurement of one billion plus Geneva banned hollow point rounds for domestic use and causing quite a stir.
(Has anybody here heard of an explanation for that yet?)
So, are you suggesting that NEITHER party has a states right agenda at all? I would disagree. The republicans had two candidates that went on and on about them during the primaries (Mr.Perry and Mr.Paul). Even Mr Romney speaks to states rights (on Obamacare, for example) in several of the speeches and in all the debates.
So, while I would happily concede Mr Bush and his admin did not seem to concerned at ALL with such ideas - the new crew does seem to understand this is a hot button issue with their base.
Just my two cents.
CrusadeREX- I will be the first to agree that the Democrats don't do enough to clean up Republican messes.
ReplyDeleteBoo
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