Posted on 02/16/2013 9:57:33 AM PST by Kaslin
Where to begin with the screed in The New Republic, “Original Sin: Why the GOP is and will continue to be the party of white people,” mislabeled “an historical investigation”?
In his claim that racism is the original and irredeemable sin of Republicans, Tanenhaus sets up the contrast to “the civil rights pageantry of the [Obama second] inauguration—Abraham Lincoln’s Bible and Martin Luther King’s, Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s swearing in of Joe Biden, Beyoncé’s slinky glamor [sic], the verses read by the gay Cuban poet Richard Blanco.”
In his enthusiasm, Tanenhaus missed the irony of using the word “pageantry,” which the dictionary defines as “mere show” or “an ostentatious display,” even as he indicts the GOP for its “history of long-standing indifference, at times outright hostility, to the nation’s diverse constituencies—blacks, women, Latinos, Asians, gays.”
Perhaps it was the lilting lines of Blanco’s inaugural poem, “All of us as vital as the one light we move through / the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day: equations to solve. . . .” that to Tanenaus conveyed “an assertion of Democratic solidarity.”
Like many other white liberals, he lectures the blacks, women, Latinos, Asians, and gays who vote Republican by presumably giving them a history lesson on John C. Calhoun, vice president under Andrew Jackson.
To Calhoun’s ideas of nullification (code for the right to own slaves) Tanenhaus links today’s “resisters—most glaringly Tea Partiers.” Today’s “most recent immigrants,” according to Tanenhaus, sense the “’hidden hand’ of Calhoun’s style of dissent, the extended lineage of rearguard politics, with its aggrieved call, heard so often today, ‘to take back America.’” This is all part of the lingering infatuation with the ‘lost cause.” Even “a new cast of GOP leaders—Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio” have become “tethered to movement ideology.” Cruz, especially because he urged a “partial government shutdown” at the recent National Review Institute conference, cannot understand how his participation harkens back to the segregationist policies of Calhoun, George Wallace, and Barry Goldwater, who resisted the inevitable ushering in of the “egalitarian” one-party system of big government and majority rule.
Were he not so obsessed with proving “a politics of frustration and rage . . . most evident within the GOP’s dwindling base—its insurgents and anti-government crusaders, its ‘middle-aged white guys,’” Tanenhaus might have had time to do some historical checking, like reading one short speech by Senator Barry Goldwater. It would have helped to recall the 1964 smear campaign by segregationist Democrats who understood which way the political winds blew. They had shifted toward integration, often in sacrifice of the Constitution. Lyndon Johnson, former segregationist, is reported to have promised “to have these n*****s voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.”
Barry Goldwater understood this and noted it in his speech explaining why he voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, an action Tanenhaus misrepresents. (The speech is reproduced in The Story of the Draft Goldwater Movement and other books about the 1964 presidential campaign.)
Goldwater, contrary to Tanenhaus’s casting, begins his speech:
“There have been few, if any, occasions when the searching of my conscience and the re-examination of my views of our constitutional system have played a greater part in the determination of my vote than they have on this occasion.
“I am unalterably opposed to discrimination or segregation on the basis of race, color or creed, or on any other basis; not only my words, but more importantly my actions through the years have repeatedly demonstrated the sincerity of my feeling in this regard.”
Goldwater mentioned his twelve years as a member of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee when he “repeatedly offered amendments to bills pertaining to labor that would end discrimination in unions” (a Democratic-stronghold with entrenched segregationists repeatedly criticized by Goldwater supporter, journalist George Schuyler).
Goldwater reminded Congress that “repeatedly those amendments have been turned down by the very members of both parties who now so vociferously support the present approach.” Those presuming to do “historical investigations” should read histories that reveal Goldwater’s lifelong support for civil rights.
For example, Lee Edwards’s well-known biography:
As a member of the Phoenix City Council [elected in 1949], Goldwater had voted to desegregate the restaurant at Sky Harbor Airport. As chief of state for the Arizona Air National Guard, he had pushed for desegregation of the guard. As a businessman, he had opened his doors to everyone. As senator, he had desegregated the Senate cafeteria in 1953, insisting that his black legislative assistant, Katherine Maxwell, be served along with every other Senate employee. As an individual citizen, he had donated generously to the Arizona NAACP, including a $200 check in 1952 to its legal defense fund to speed integration of the public schools.
Goldwater was a member of the Phoenix and Tucson chapters of the NAACP, until that organization, infiltrated by radicals, started attacking him politically. He was also a strong supporter of the Phoenix Urban League and in 1991 received their Humanitarian Award “’for fifty years of loyal service.’”
But Goldwater—unlike progressives—did not brag.
In his speech he only reminded Congress of his support for the 1957 and 1960 civil rights bills, opposed by many of the same Democrats clamoring for the 1964 bill.
Goldwater stated, “My public utterances during the debates on those measures and since reveal clearly the areas in which I feel that federal responsibility lies and federal legislation on this subject can be both effective and appropriate.”
Goldwater felt the 1964 bill was “effective and appropriate” except for Titles II and VII regarding public accommodations and employment. “I find no constitutional basis for the exercise of federal regulatory authority in either of these areas,” he went on. “The attempted usurpation of such power,” he said, was a “grave threat to the very essence of our basic system of government” and to the “freedoms of the very persons whose feelings and whose liberties are the major subject of this legislation.”
Goldwater would not compromise his oath to uphold the Constitution, an act that was supported wholeheartedly by the great journalist and black civil rights advocate George Schuyler. His amendments were not accepted, so with a reluctant heart and knowing that his vote would be “misconstrued” Goldwater voted against the act.
His vote was not only “misconstrued,” but used in a smear campaign against him, started by fellow Republicans like William Scranton. At the 1964 Republican Convention in San Francisco, 40,000 civil rights demonstrators picked up the ball and denounced Goldwater as Hitler. CBS reporter Daniel Schorr then spread a false report that Goldwater was to meet with Nazi holdovers on an upcoming trip to Germany. Schorr would go on to pontificate regularly at taxpayer-funded NPR—until his death in 2010—the same station that gave Tanenhaus a platform to expand on his lies.
Goldwater’s vote against the 1964 bill was misrepresented by his opponents, and by historians and textbook writers ever since.
The civil rights movement had been hijacked by the New Leftists (“communists with a small ‘c’”). The majority of blacks and old-line civil rights leaders rejected these (white) radicals’ demands for redistribution of property and loose sexual mores (“smashing monogamy”) under the cover of civil rights.
Nevertheless, Tanenhaus claims that any objections to excesses are mere excuses. Shamefully, Tanenhaus writes that Goldwater “joined the Dixie contingent . . . when he opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” He quotes Richard Rovere, Depression-era communist and writer for the New Masses, and then writer for the Nation and the New Yorker:
“for Goldwater the opportunity had been all but foreclosed by Brent Bozell—or some other hand guided by the ‘guiding hand’—in The Conscience of a Conservative. In that book, Goldwater allowed himself to be committed to a states’-rights position that Jefferson Davis could hardly have found acceptable.”
Ah, yes, the magical ‘guiding hand’ of Brent Bozell!
Tannenhaus brings readers to the present, to the ominous Calhounists of the Tea Party and the “Tea Party-inflected House of Representatives,” who “speak in the bitter tones of denial, as modernization and egalitarianism go forward.” “Nullification” is a threat and a code from those who challenge “’Obamacare.’”
“We see it as well,” continues Tanenhaus, “in Senator Rand Paul’s promise to ‘nullify anything the president does’ to impose new gun controls.”
For Tanenhaus upholding the Constitution is synonymous with racism. For him, disagreements over healthcare and gun control are not a “practical attempt to find a better answer,” but a ‘Constitutional’ demand for restoration of the nation to its hallowed prior self. It is not a coincidence that the resurgence of nullification is happening while our first African American president is in office.”
Of course, there are no “coincidences” for those like Tanenhaus. It must be the ghosts of Brent Bozell and John C. Calhoun that guide the racist hearts of those who disagree with the pure-hearted, perfectly egalitarian guardian of “blacks, women, Latinos, Asians, gays,” Sam Tanenhaus.
Original Sin: The KKK was started by democrats.
The GOP is and will continue to be the party of logical people.
That “Original Sin” of Democrats carried into the modern era when they Democrapweasels put Robert Sheets Byrd (D-KKK) in position as the president pro tempore (into 2010).
How many Klansmen that Robert Byrd himself PERSONALLY RECRUITED committed civil rights offenses (violence, harassment, etc.)?
Robert Byrd went on television once to defend his continued use of the word nigger claiming that “there are white niggers too”. Dumbass liberal logic and the fools in the Democrat Party don’t give a sh!t.
BTT
Ha! what a steaming pantload. The dems are the ‘race’ party. When it comes to race, I don’t give a flyin’ sh@t. I do however have a strong aversion to socialists, marxists and commies no matter the race.
They are following Alinsky’s rules for radicals ...
just pick a number.
The rules
RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood.
RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.
RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.
RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones.
RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news.
RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.
RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.
RULE 10: “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” It is the unceasing pressure that will result in the reaction of the opposition that is essential for the success of the campaign.
RULE 11: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.
RULE 12: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem.
RULE 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
John C. Calhoun was a Democrat.
Liberals ignored my book Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama throughout the fall. Now that I’m safely home from my book tour, they feel free to jabber on about their make-believe history of the civil rights movement with abandon.
In the hackiest of all hacky articles, Sam Tanenhaus, the man responsible for ruining The New York Times Book Review, has written a cover story in The New Republic, titled: “Original Sin: Why the GOP is and will continue to be the party of white people.”
MSNBC has been howling this cliche for a decade — or, as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said of Tanenhaus’ article, “a bold headline”!
Being interviewed by a giddy Matthews — who has no black friends, employees or neighbors — Tanenhaus announced the startling fact that once, long ago, some Republicans supported civil rights!
“In the 1950s, as I say in the piece you read, Republicans looked pretty good on civil rights under Eisenhower. We had the Brown decision, the Central High in Little Rock, where he did the tough thing and sent the troops in, and we had the first modern civil rights act.”
It wasn’t a “tough” decision for Eisenhower to send troops to Little Rock in 1957.
In the presidential campaign the year before, the Republican platform had expressly endorsed the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The Democratic platform did not.
To the contrary, that year, 99 members of Congress signed the “Southern Manifesto” denouncing the court’s ruling in Brown. Two were Republicans. Ninety-seven were Democrats.
As president, Eisenhower pushed through the 1957 Civil Rights Act and the 1960 Civil Rights Act. He established the Civil Rights Commission. It was Eisenhower, not Truman, who fully desegregated the military.
Meanwhile, the Brown decision was being openly defied by the Democratic governor of Arkansas (and Bill Clinton pal), Orval Faubus, who refused to admit black students to Little Rock Central High School.
Liberals act as if Eisenhower’s sending federal troops to Little Rock was like Nixon going to China. No, it was like Nixon going to California.
Only someone who knows no history could proclaim, as Tanenhaus did, that the 1957 act “wasn’t great, it wasn’t what LBJ gave us, but it was something.”
If Eisenhower’s 1957 civil rights bill was weak, it was because of one man: Lyndon B. Johnson. As Robert Caro explains in his book, “Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” it was LBJ who stripped the bill of its enforcement provisions. Even after that, the bill was still opposed by 18 senators — all of them Democrats.
To the easily astounded Chris Matthews, Tanenhaus breathlessly remarked, “Not one Republican voted against that bill!” — as if the 1957 Civil Right Act was a Democratic idea and they were delighted to get any Republican support at all.
Whoever wrote this -- and it's unclear whether it's Mary Grabar or Tanenhaus -- made a huge mistake. That wasn't the issue at all in the Nullification Crisis, it was taxes and regionalism.
But rock on, dudes. It's all about whipping up the "low-information voters" anyway. It's about ideology and rally messages, not history.
The actual sin is being white, which people have to live down in order to get the approval of liberals.
Their (purported, advertised) worldview has evolved into an inverted racism, under the influence of the black caucus and in furtherance of identity politics.
This is an ineresting picture, of Charlton, Sidney Poitier, and Harry Belafonte, at the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C
He once even picketed a segregated theater which was premiering one of his own films.
At the time, Heston was a Democrat, (and King a Republican) but was converted to a Republican by listening to Goldwater. When asked why he changed political parites, Heston replied "I didn't change. The Democratic party changed."
So when he changed parties, did he significantly change his view on race? I'd like to hear someone explain if he did.
Heston was right. Communists calling themselves "progs" spread throughout the Democratic Party and made it over into a Stalinist party.
Stalinist intellectual Susan Sontag, in a recruiting-poster moment staged for the benefit of alienated blacks who were being massaged by radical leaders trying to capture the Civil Rights Movement, said in a famous quote in 1966, "The Caucasian race is the cancer of the planet."
That's the kind of garbage that drove Charlton Heston and many other patriots out of the Democratic Party.
It may have been the wrong choice: like mainline church congregants who fail to resist takeovers by the homosexual cabal today but instead withdraw and seek other churches, conscientious Democrats' leaving the party left the Stalinists in control, gave them "legitimacy" and gave them political power, which they exercised to the full when they nominated Compleat Tool Sen. George McGovern for the presidency. McGovern had attended the Stalin-dominated rump Progressive convention in 1948 that nominated High-Profile New Deal Tool Henry Wallace for President, and McGovern's campaigners went on to be Carter apparatchiks and Clintonistas, eventually opening the door first for the Manchurian President and then his black-racist, Stalinist successor.
Ronald Reagan fought Communists in the Screen Actors' Guild and won. That other Democrats, for whatever reason, did not fight them for the soul of the Democratic Party is the gravest and second most consequential Communist triumph of the last 100 years.
In their first great triumph, the Communists overcame soldiers, peasants, potato farmers. In the second, they have overcome civilized people, just like the Nazis did, by convincing those in the best position to do so, not to fight them.
Actually the Wisconsin and Ohio legislatures passed ‘personal freedom laws’ to nullify the new Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which required local governments and peace officers to assist both federal marshals and private ‘slave recovery contractors’ in catching runaway slaves. Nullification is simply a concept that can be applied by any state over an issue that generates enough resistance. That is what is spinning up what amounts to a nullification campaign against any major gun ban or disguised registration program.
Dumbass liberal logic and the fools in the Democrat Party.
AMEN
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