Posted on 08/29/2005 12:15:27 PM PDT by kennedy
More slimy innuendo from the Washington Post aimed at portraying Supreme Court nominee John Roberts as an extremist, this time as someone who regrets slavery ended when the South lost the "War Between the States." A week-and-a-half after she was one of three reporters who wrote a front page hit job, "Roberts Resisted Women's Rights," which distorted an anti-lawyer quip into a slam at women becoming lawyers, Jo Becker got solo authorship on a page two story on Friday about how, when ghostwriting an article for President Reagan, Roberts "scratched out the words 'Civil War' and replaced them with 'War Between the States.'" Becker helpfully relayed how a professor told her that "'many people who are sympathetic to the Confederate position are more comfortable with the idea of a 'War Between the States,'" and, those "'opposed to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s would undoubtedly be more comfortable with the words he chose.'" She none-too-subtly cited another expert who asserted that some people use "War Between the States" because "they believe the Confederacy was right to secede."
Becker's nine-paragraph August 26 story, "In Article, Roberts's Pen Appeared to Dip South," appeared on page two next to a longer anti-Roberts story: "Gay Rights Groups Urge Defeat of Nominee." The subhead: "Appeals Court Judge's Ideology is Called 'a Mortal Danger to Equal Rights.'"
The August 19 CyberAlert recounted, about the Becker story from that day's paper: The front page of Friday's Washington Post featured an article with a lead clearly framed through a liberal prism intended to paint Supreme Court nominee John Roberts as an extremist and/or a male chauvinist. "Roberts Resisted Women's Rights: 1982-86 Memos Detail Skepticism," declared the headline over the August 19 story it took three reporters to research and write, Amy Goldstein, R. Jeffrey Smith and Jo Becker (along with six more credited at the end of the article.) The loaded lead: "Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women's rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called 'the purported gender gap' and, at one point, questioning 'whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good.'"
A look at the full quote, however, shows that the Post distorted the personal aside in the memo. Roberts was not making a disparaging remark about women but -- in response to a judging panel at Clairol considering an award to a female White House staffer who had convinced some homemakers to go to law school -- he simply offered a quip about whether society needs more lawyers: "Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide."
For an excerpt from the August 19 Post article, and a link to it: www.mediaresearch.org
To comment on it, go to the posting about it on NewsBusters, the MRC's new blog: newsbusters.org
Now, back to the August 26 Washington Post hit on Roberts, "In Article, Roberts's Pen Appeared to Dip South." An excerpt from the "news story" by Jo Becker:
When John G. Roberts Jr. prepared to ghostwrite an article for President Ronald Reagan a little over two decades ago, his pen took a Civil War reenactment detour.
The article, which was to appear in the scholarly National Forum journal, was called "The Presidency: Roles and Responsibilities." Roberts was writing by hand a section on how the congressional appropriations process had evolved.
A fastidious editor of other people's copy as well as his own, Roberts began with the words "Until about the time of the Civil War." Then, the Indiana native scratched out the words "Civil War" and replaced them with "War Between the States."...
While it is true that the Civil War is also known as the War Between the States, the Encyclopedia Americana notes that the term is used mainly by southerners. Sam McSeveney, a history professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University who specialized in the Civil War, said that Roberts's choice of words was significant.
"Many people who are sympathetic to the Confederate position are more comfortable with the idea of a 'War Between the States,'" McSeveney explained. "People opposed to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s would undoubtedly be more comfortable with the words he chose."
John M. Coski, the historian and library director of the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, said the term was commonplace in the South until the 1960s or early 1970s. He said some people use "War Between the States" out of habit, others think it quaint or iconoclastic, and still others use it because they believe the Confederacy was right to secede.
"You can't always draw the inference that someone who uses the term does so with an ideological intent, but at the same time you can't be blind to the fact that some people do," Coski said....
END of Excerpt
Well put! You would think he called it "The War of Northern Aggression" :)
You really wonder who would pay to read that trash.
I agree. Interestingly, I just received an ancestor's military records and on the top of the pages is the title, "The War of 1861."
There you go! If he in fact were sympathetic to the Confederacy, that's what he would have called it.
One important point in making a presidential speech is to avoid unnecessarily offending people.
Most northerners call it the Civil War, but they couldn't care less if someone calls it the War Between the States. To them, the Civil War is ancient history, long over and done with. In contrast, many southerners still bear resentments. It seems obvious that Roberts chose the name less likely to offend Reagan's listeners. That is a speechwriter's job.
By that logic then, WWII would be the War of 1941.
You are simply being to logical for the Dems to understand what you are talking about.
I prefer to use the term "War of Northern Agression" which is the most accurate.
Byrd has asked Roberts to go to lunch to discuss this common ground.
"Although the War ended slavery, it was not primary the reason for the War."
Logical or not, I was commenting on what the US Government called the conflict commonly referred to today as the "Civil War"
war of 1941? that would offend europeans. for them it was the war of 1939.
Oops. Poor editing earlier:
"Although the War ended slavery, it was not the primary reason for the War."
Yes, that was understood. But the term is not accurate, even though it was used. It is interesting though, which was why you mentioned it. Thank you. It was a tidbit I was unaware of.
I speak as a Yankee who has lived in the South for decades and can decipher "Southern Speak". 8)
I think that specific phrase can only be used, by females, in heavy make up and long curled hair, while twirling a parasol and batting their eyelashes.
True Southern Nationalists call it "The Second Revolution, Round One." Round Two is just beginning.
Actually, didn't the war start at the Marco Polo bridge and be called the War of 1937?
plans were shown and made in '37. it didn't become a war until germany actually invaded czechoslavakia and other countries signed treaties with germany in '39.
at least, that's how history books define it.
you could, however say it started in '33 when the first concentration camp was opened.
No, the Marco Polo bridge incident started the Japanese invasion of China.
"Although WW2 ended the Holocaust, it was not the primary reason for the War."
hrm. i don't know how japan fits into the equation. never really took anything in asian history. my american history and world history classes never really said anything about japan until dec '41.
That would be no more accurate than the Civil War. I recall learning of southern aggression at Fort Sumter that started the War between the States.
Never heard of Ft. Sumter, have you?
Don't wonder. Fewer and fewer people read it. Failing circulation numbers is going to make them extinct in the not too distant future unless they get shots in the arm from Soros types.
Of course, it was common knowledge in April 1861, as it is today, that the re-provisioning of Fort Sumter was done only to provoke the Confederacy into firing on the Fort...Lincoln acknowledged this himself
What nonsense. People will try and smear Roberts with anything.
OK, I admit that I have not been in the the South long enough to understand Southern Speak completely. 8)
[I do love how it sounds even if I don't know the meaning.]
You mean not everybody calls it that???
Back to the topic at hand. It is good to keep shinning a light on these pathetic efforts by Left leaning journalists to smear a Conservative judge by innuendo and reporting out of context. I am just learning now of some of the wacko ideas espoused by Justice Ginsburg. Would have been nice if the press back during her Senate hearing was equally as aggressive in pursuing her views and background.
bump
That's a good one! It kind of reminds me of the left today when they say the United States provoked terrorists into attacking the World Trade Center. Some people actually believe that one, too!
We really ought to try to understand why terrorists, the South, etc. hate us. Why they feel they must resort to violence. We really shouldn't proke them.
My favorite is the racial restrictive covenant issue.
Back when Bush was running against Gore, some Democratic operative went so far as to run a title search on every house that Bush ever owned. They found that Bush had purchased a house in 1988 that included in its title history a racial restrictive covenant going back to 1939. The Supreme Court ruled that racial restrictive covenants cannot be enforced by any state or federal court back in 1948. The 1968 Fair Housing Act also specifically prohibited them. Consequently, title companies don't even report them in title commitments, there is no way Bush would have known about it, and it would have been completely irrelevant if he had.
The Democrats have now tried to run the same smear on Roberts. The problem is, they can't find a restrictive covenant in the title history of any house he has ever owned or in any of the houses that his parents owned when he was growing up. So they have had to resort to getting the media to run stories saying that some houses in the town where Roberts grew up had restrictive covenants, even though the house where Roberts grew up did not.
My Junior High School history text book right here in the heart of the Confederacy, Connecticut, labeled the war as The War Between the States, if that has any relevance to this discussion
It would be like that...if we found out that President Bush wrote a letter to Donald Rumsfeld in which he said that the cause of the US would be furthered by an attack on the WTC and, fortunately, an action he has taken has caused the attack...because that is essentially what Lincoln wrote a couple of weeks after Fort Sumter. Of course, if we found out the President had written such a letter, we would believe he did provoke the attack
You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort-Sumpter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.
--From Abraham Lincoln's May 1, 1861 Letter to Navy Secretary Gustavus V. Fox
Again, you're blaming the victim. Even if a woman wears a short skirt to attract men, it is not justification for rape.
The bottom line is that the South was the first to use aggressive violence. And I say that as a native Southerner. There was no justification for the South to attack Ft. Sumter.
A century ago "the Civil War" looked like a neutral alternative that people could settle on. A civil war is "A war between factions or regions of the same country." Given that we'd been the same country for generations before the war broke out, it's a valid name for the conflict, and probably the best.
"The War Between the States" is a folksy alternative. Particular states weren't fighting other states. Either two parts of the same country were at war or there were two rival nations or confederations or leagues fighting. But the state of Vermont wasn't fighting Connecticut or even Georgia. You can call it TWBTS if you want to, but it's not the "true" name or a more accurate one.
"The War of Northern Aggression" is a joke name. There must be some real insecurity -- some need to expressly blame the other fellow for the war -- in people who use the term.
I don't think anyone would seriously have a problem with Roberts using the term "War Between the States." It was long a valid alternative and judged to be more acceptable in the South. If you were born in the 1950s and raised in the 1960s and 1970s and working in the 1980s there wasn't anything invidious or vicious about choosing the version that Roberts did.
It looks like the Post is changing or manipulating the rules here. Standards of "political correctness" change with time, and a phrase once judged less divisive and more courteous gets regarded as somehow wrong by a later generation. It's like finding a document written in the 1950s referring to "Negroes" or "Orientals" and assuming that there's some evil intent involved.
Good post. They go back decades to dig up dirt on a good and honorable person, but don't take a day to investigate someone [Sandy Burglar?] walking out of the Archives with his pants stuffed with stolen classified documents.
They expend enormous effort trying to nail Pres. Bush on a trivial physical exam accusation and give John Kerry a pass on what appeared to us vets to be a very distorted, if not phony, record of medals from Viet Nam.
No wonder middle America thinks most journalists are bottom feeders.
Let's try this. A woman police officer has dressed as a hooker in a sting operation. She hopes that men offer to pay her for sex. In fact, a man does indeed do just that.
Who did something wrong?
If, in fact, Roberts is sympathetic to the Confederacy, then certainly he has some redeeming qualities. From some other reports I had heard, I was beginning to be concerned about him.
I have always had a problem with that kind of sting. Because the "perp" might not have done anything bad if he were not solicited. I am OK with a sting to receive stolen goods because you are dealing with people who have already committed a crime.
The war did not end slavery. It was legal in the north during and after the war.
The EP was not directed at union states.
To bring this back to the conversation at hand, South Carolina had already acted unlawfully by attempting to secede.
What law specifically, did South Carolina break by their ordinance of Secession? To act unlawfully a law must be broken. Where is this law and where can I read it?
There is nothing in the Constitution that deals specifically with secession...it is less a constitutional question than a moral question...when a group of states voluntarily bind themselves to create a common federal government that is to perform certain, enumerated powers...and, then when one group of states, desires to leave that union, what moral authority does the first group have to compel the second group to remain in the union against its wishes?
It should be noted that, before 1861, there were several other secession movements in the US...one in the early 1800's when a group of New England states nearly voted to secede at an 1814 Secession Convention in Connecticut and, before the southern states seceded, there was a small push to secede among abolitionists in New England who objected to the federal government's unconstitutional actions in helping the southern states preserve slavery (e.g. the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act). Virtually no one before 1861 questioned the right of states to secede.
Nine out of ten people of the North are opposed to forcing South Carolina to remain in the Union, for the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration...is that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed. Therefore, if the southern states want to secede, they have a clear right to do so.
--Abolitionist editor of the New York Daily Tribune, Horace Greeley, February 5, 1861
When you read the Founders, you will note that their greatest concern...the greatest threat to freedom and liberty in their minds is the centralization and consolidation of power. It was why the Constitution so carefully circumscribed the powers of the federal government and tried to leave the vast majority of power in the decentralized hands of the several states. It is why Madison and Jefferson argued so forcefully for the power of states to nullify laws they viewed as unconstitutional in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions Without the ultimate protection...the threat of secession...of what effect is the power of the states? The Founders intended the sovereign states to be the ultimate check and balance against the potential power of the federal government. It is no coinicidence that, after the War of 1861 was decided...the scope, power and cost of the federal government went into overdrive...the ultimate check on federal power was gone. And we find ourselves in the state we are today...the federal government does what it wants, how it wants and at the cost it wants...and the objections of any individual states are of no concern...that's not in any sense how our Founders envisioned it.
Consider the best known advocate of the view that the southern states had no right to secede...
The individual states of the American Union . . . could not have possessed any state sovereignty of their own. For it was not these states that formed the Union, on the contrary it was the Union which formed a great part of such so-called states.
--Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf
In Mein Kampf, Hitler spends pages ridiculing the idea of federalism, decentralization of power and sovereign states...both in the US and in Germany.
He praises Bismarck for curtailing the power of the individual German states and writes:
And so today this state, for the sake of its own existence, is obliged to curtail the sovereign rights of the individual provinces more and more, not only out of general material considerations, but from ideal considerations as well. Thus, a rule basic for us National Socialists is derived: A powerful national Reich . . .Certainly all the states in the world are moving toward a certain unification in their inner organization. And in this Germany will be no exception. Today it is an absurdity to speak of a ‘state sovereignty’ of individual provinces . . Since for us the state as such is only a form, but the essential is its content, the nation, the people, it is clear that everything else must be subordinated to its sovereign interests. In particular we cannot grant to any individual state within the nation and the state representing it state sovereignty and sovereignty in point of political power. The mischief of individual federated states . . . must cease and will some day cease.... The lesson for the future is that the importance of the individual states will in the future no longer lie in the fields of state power and policy . . ."
It could have been written by Old Abe himself
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