Friday, August 16, 2013

“... to have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years...”



Michael Walsh reminds us about the sordid racism of the Democratic Party:

In order to escape their truly wretched past..., modern Democrats have adopted as an article of faith the bedtime story that, thanks to Tricky Dick Nixon’s “southern strategy,” the racists who had been the backbone of their party for the better part of a century suddenly switched to the GOP en masse some time around 1968, with the happy result that now all the racists are on the right. Presto — instant virtuousness and a clean slate!

It’s a lie, of course. But don’t take it from me, take it from my National Review colleague Kevin Williamson, who addressed this issue brilliantly last year: 
Worse than the myth and the cliché is the outright lie, the utter fabrication with malice aforethought, and my nominee for the worst of them is the popular but indefensible belief that the two major U.S. political parties somehow “switched places” vis-à-vis protecting the rights of black Americans, a development believed to be roughly concurrent with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the rise of Richard Nixon. That Republicans have let Democrats get away with this mountebankery is a symptom of their political fecklessness, and in letting them get away with it the GOP has allowed itself to be cut off rhetorically from a pantheon of Republican political heroes, from Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass to Susan B. Anthony, who represent an expression of conservative ideals as true and relevant today as it was in the 19th century. Perhaps even worse, the Democrats have been allowed to rhetorically bury their Bull Connors, their longstanding affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, and their pitiless opposition to practically every major piece of civil-rights legislation for a century.  
As Kevin goes on to point out: 
If the parties had in some meaningful way flipped on civil rights, one would expect that to show up in the electoral results in the years following the Democrats’ 1964 about-face on the issue. Nothing of the sort happened: Of the 21 Democratic senators who opposed the 1964 act, only one would ever change parties. Nor did the segregationist constituencies that elected these Democrats throw them out in favor of Republicans: The remaining 20 continued to be elected as Democrats or were replaced by Democrats. It was, on average, nearly a quarter of a century before those seats went Republican. If southern rednecks ditched the Democrats because of a civil-rights law passed in 1964, it is strange that they waited until the late 1980s and early 1990s to do so.

And yet this myth persists — in fact, it’s just about the only response today’s Democrats have to their own sordid history: pinning it on the other guy. It makes them profoundly uncomfortable that among the 21 who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be found Albert Arnold Gore, Sr., the founder of the Hillbilly Dynasty; Robert “KKK” Byrd, the Conscience of the Senate; and Sleepin’ Sam Ervin of Watergate fame...
The Republican ascendancy in Dixie is associated with the rise of the southern middle class, the increasingly trenchant conservative critique of Communism and the welfare state, the Vietnam controversy and the rise of the counterculture, law-and-order concerns rooted in the urban chaos that ran rampant from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and the incorporation of the radical Left into the Democratic party. Individual events, especially the freak show that was the 1968 Democratic convention, helped solidify conservatives’ affiliation with the Republican party. Democrats might argue that some of these concerns — especially welfare and crime — are “dog whistles” or “code” for race and racism, but this criticism is shallow in light of the evidence and the real saliency of those issues among U.S. voters of all backgrounds and both parties for decades. Indeed, Democrats who argue that the best policies for black Americans are those that are soft on crime and generous with welfare are engaged in much the same sort of cynical racial calculation President Johnson was practicing when he informed skeptical southern governors that his plan for the Great Society was “to have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.” Johnson’s crude racism is, happily, largely a relic of the past, but his strategy endures.
It is wrong, I think, to understand the Democratic Party as the party of racism, although Democrats utterly own racism in American culture. But racism is not precisely what defines them. Democrats haven't the integrity to be just racists-- that is, mere racism, for all of its odiousness, ignorance, and cruelty, is at least an honestly held view. Racists actually believe something.

What characterizes Democrat Party policy on race-- from slavery to Jim Crow to the KKK to Bull Connor to William Fullbright to George Wallace to Al Gore Sr. to Jesse Jackson to Louis Farrakhan to Al Sharpton-- is race-baiting- the demagogic use of race to gain political advantage. It's in the circle of hell below racism. Lyndon Johnson blurted it: his plan for the Great Society was “to have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.”

Race-baiting is working, still, among Americans of all races. And while I believe that we who abhor racism and who insist on a culture free of racial bias should continue to speak out against racism and race-baiting, we should be honest about our prospects and about the deeper cause of our nation's racial sickness.

Americans like race-baiting.

We have voted for it again and again and again. We have elected race-baiting Democrats since the ante-bellum years of the 19th century, and the Democrat party today remains the party with the most numerous and loyal supporters. Americans have elected and reelected a President whose only claim to office is his race. If Obama were white, he'd still be an unemployed Alinskite hack dozing through Jeremiah Wright's sermons. Obama lacked, and still lacks, even minimal skills for high office, except amorality.

Democrats are vile, not stupid. Race-baiting in America works. It is perhaps the single most successful formula for electoral success in American politics. The Democrat party depends on it utterly. Without it, they would never win another national election.

Racial conflict is their oxygen. They replenish it incessantly.

Exhibit number one billion of the political elixir of race-baiting is sitting now at his desk in the Oval Office, reading your e-mail.   

12 comments:

  1. Egnor: "What characterizes Democrat Party policy on race-- from slavery to Jim Crow to the KKK to Bull Connor to William Fullbright to George Wallace to Al Gore Sr. to Jesse Jackson to Louis Farrakhan to Al Sharpton-- is race-baiting- the demagogic use of race to gain political advantage. It's in the circle of hell below racism."

    As a card-carrying Democrat, I can't help but throw you some juicy bait, Egnor. Here, kitty-kitty!

    "the central question that emerges... is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes – the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race."

    William F. Buckley, Jr.
    Why the South Must Prevail

    Hoo

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    Replies
    1. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyAugust 16, 2013 at 9:27 AM

      And bait it is. :-)

      #4 Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
      -- S Alinsky

      In Hooter's fantasy world, organized by Alinsky's amoral power-at-any-cost "rules", because a famous conservative once happened to be on the wrong side of the race issue, it absolves Democrats from their responsibility as the architects of Jim Crow. What an absurd, childish notion.

      Delete
  2. Hoo:

    You are arguing that in 1957 WFB agreed with Lyndon Johnson,JFK, and most of the Democratic Party on segregation.

    The segregationist view shared by LBJ, JFK, WFB and most Democrats was contrary to the Republican view, expressed by Eisenhower, who desegrated Little Rock schools and passed the first modern Civil Rights Act (supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats) in 1957.

    Republicans voted in 1960 for Nixon, who later began affirmative action. Democrats voted for JFK, who opposed Eisenhower's 1957 Civil Rights Act. In 1964, Repubs voted for Barry Goldwater, who founded the Arizona NAACP. Dems voted for LJB, who voted against anti-lynching laws.

    Democrats flocked to Democrat George Wallace in 1968.

    Facts are a pain, aren't they, Hoo?

    How does that exonerate Democrats?

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  3. Egnor,

    You realize that we're talking here about the father of the modern conservative movement, don't you? The founder of National Review.

    Hoo

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    Replies
    1. Hoo:

      I know a lot more about NR and WFB than you do.

      Wow. One leading Republican conservative one time expressed a racial view that was identical to that of most of the Democratic Party for a century.

      That sure is an indictment of Republican conservatives. It says nothing about Democrats, however.

      Heh.

      Tell me, Hoo: which party majority supported the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, and 1966, and which party majority opposed them?

      Delete
    2. Egnor: Wow. One leading Republican conservative one time expressed a racial view that was identical to that of most of the Democratic Party for a century.

      Not just leading conservative. The father of modern conservatism. Not once.

      In a 1969 column, Buckley hymned the research of Arthur Jensen on race and IQ, which showed blacks testing lower than whites on abstract reasoning skills, a finding from which Buckley deduced a racial imperviousness to improvement by education. In the 1970′s The National Review persistently defended apartheid South Africa on the same basis that it had once defended Jim Crow.

      And he was hardly alone.

      The Voting Rights Act was introduced by above-mentioned President Lindon Johnson. It was opposed by above-mentioned William Buckley.

      Hoo

      Delete
    3. Michael,

      What was on a political party platform over 50 years ago is irrelevant. It corresponds to at least two generations of politicians.

      Although, someone who accepts divine revelation, including sins of the father being punished unto the fourth generation of offspring, two generations is nothing.

      Delete
    4. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyAugust 16, 2013 at 9:37 AM

      A distraction.

      ** Civil Rights Act:

      The Senate version:

      Democratic Party: 46–21 (69–31%)
      Republican Party: 27–6 (82–18%)

      The Senate version, voted on by the House:

      Democratic Party: 153–91 (63–37%)
      Republican Party: 136–35 (80–20%)

      ** Voting Rights Act

      Senate: 77–19

      Democrats: 47–16 (75%-25%)
      Republicans: 30–2 (94%-6%)

      House: 333–85

      Democrats: 221–61 (78%-22%)
      Republicans: 112–24 (82%-18%)

      Conference Report:

      Senate: 79–18

      Democrats: 49–17 (four Southern Democrats voted in favor: Albert Gore, Sr., Ross Bass, George Smathers and Ralph Yarborough).
      Republicans: 30–1 (the lone nay was Strom Thurmond; John Tower who did not vote was paired as a nay vote with Eugene McCarthy who would have voted in favor.)

      House: 328–74

      Democrats: 217–54 (19%)
      Republicans: 111–20 (15%)

      Delete
    5. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyAugust 16, 2013 at 9:58 AM

      barkmad: "...sins of the father being punished unto the fourth generation of offspring"

      You don't believe that the behavior of fathers affects his children? And in a tribal culture where families were close-knit and lived in multi-generational households, that those behaviors would not affect grandchildren and even great-grandchildren?

      You're confabulating again today, barkmad.

      By the way, here's the the psychology definition of confabulation from the psychology wiki:

      Confabulation is a memory disturbance that is characterized by verbal statements or actions that inaccurately describe history, background, and present situations... The most known causes of confabulation are traumatic and acquired (e.g., aneurysm, edema) brain damage, and psychiatric or psychological disorders (e.g., schizophrenia, bipolar, Alzheimer`s).

      Lay off the pop psychobabble. It makes you look stupid.

      Delete
    6. Georgie,

      Fark off. I'm using a perfectly standard definition of 'confabulation'. Confabulation is a sign of disease. So are hallucinations. Hallucinations and confabulation also occur normally.

      It's just a result of evolution resulting in a human brain which is very good, but not perfect. Or, if you like, the result of God creating a human brain which is very good but not perfect.

      Memory is not perfect. Whenever you remember an event, you don't remember all the details. Not anywhere close. So the brain subconsciously adds details from similar events. And adds details that 'explain' what happened. Not pathological. Normal.

      There's no certain way of distinguishing between true memories and false memories. Not without physical evidence, such as photos (unless photoshopped).

      I don't mind being 'made to look stupid'. It's to be preferred than being stupid, like you.

      Delete
  4. Seriously, which party treats Black People as inferior, needing protection, unable to make their own life decisions, naturally inclined to crime, etc.
    That would be the DEMOCRATS !

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  5. Leaders of the Democratic Party having a meeting about how to get and keep certain categories of voters many years ago:
    "I think if we take over the role of the daddy and pay woman to have more babies without being married, then the men will have no productive role to fill and they'll turn to alcohol, drugs, and crime". "Then we have all these children with the Govt. as daddy". "They'll do poorly in school and then have little incentive to work and will create generations of dependency". We come in and tell them they're all victims and we've pretty much got us a plantation that will vote for us always". "We'll throw in a lot of race-baiting to fuel the fire"
    But that's not enough to win national elections so:
    "We'll make rich people seem evil, especially rich white men". "We need to show that rich white men are the root of all the problems that the 'victims' have". "That'll get us everyone who thinks they're entitled to more but don't want to work for it". "We'll spend more than can ever be payed back and lower the standard of living for everyone and then blame it on them evil rich white men".
    "Meanwhile, nothing improves for the underclass over numerous generations but we get more and more power"..

    ReplyDelete