Posted on 01/24/2002 12:50:37 PM PST by traditionalist
Pledging to win a larger share of Hispanic and black votes, The Republican National Committee completed its winter meeting. This fateful decision could mean either the end of class and race political war in the U.S. or the demise of the Republican Party.
The outcome depends on how Republicans approach the task. The GOP can base its appeal to minorities on assimilation to American culture, on the promise of an opportunity society based in low taxes and decreased regulation, on respect for parental authority and a reduction in government intrusion in family affairs, and on respect for individual achievement and self-reliance.
If Hispanics and blacks desire a free and independent life, they will respond positively to the offer.
The alternative approach is to compete with Democrats in offering income support programs and race-based preferences.
The first approach would not only rally the demoralized Republican constituency, but also provide a test whether immigrants are committed to American principles or to income redistribution. The personal income tax burden rests on 32 million taxpayers (primarily white males), who deserve to know whether they have a future different from tax slavery.
The alternative approach--pandering, preferences, and handouts--will destroy the Republican Party.
Many of the Republican Party’s natural constituents are disgusted and alienated by the party’s wobbly principles and refuse to vote. Experts have pointed out that had Bush received 2 or 3 percent more votes from the white population, he would have swamped Al Gore in the electoral college. If Bush competes for minorities on the Democrats’ terms, he will lose more white votes than he will gain minority votes.
Moreover, whatever handouts the Republicans offer, the Democrats will offer more. Two political parties competing to redistribute income and expand minority privileges would spell the swift end of the U.S.
Most immigrants to the U.S. are poor and uneducated. They are tax-users. Sensing the white guilt that weakens resistance to income redistribution, organizations that speak for immigrants lobby for more benefits. Large and concentrated immigrant populations, combined with the emphasis on multiculturalism, make assimilation difficult.
Fearing that a principled approach to minorities will fail, GOP pandering has already begun. Witness President Bush’s plan to legalize millions of illegal Mexican immigrants and to provide food stamps for legal aliens.
Democrats will outbid him. Republican voters will desert the GOP.
Millions of Americans believe that their culture is being overrun from abroad and overturned from within, and that they are forced to pay for their corresponding loss of community and sense of self with their own tax dollars.
Black and white New York City councilmen are taking down portraits of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Malcolm X is taking their place. There is no longer a George Washington Day; but there is a Martin Luther King Day.
Announcing a MLK, Jr., portrait that will hang prominently in the White House, President Bush accepted the replacement of our Founding Fathers with new heroes: “Some figures in history, renowned in their day, grow smaller with the passing of time. The man [MLK, Jr.] from Atlanta, Georgia, only grows larger with the years. America is a better place because he was here, and we will honor his name forever.”
Many Republicans will see in these words the Republican Party’s acquiescence to racial preferences and unequal rights for whites. The war against terrorism and the illusion that the country has pulled together have led Republicans to conclude that they can broaden their political base by betraying the people who vote for them.
When the Democrats tried this, they lost the “solid South.”
If this is true, I can tell you what I won't be doing in November of the year 2004.
I imagine people once said similar things about George Washington.
Oh. Sorry. We don't celebrate his birthday anymore. After all, he owned slaves and his buddy Jefferson liked to diddle them. Allegedly. Guess we'll have to wait for Louis Farrakan to do the honors.
I understand the rhetorical points that you're trying to score, but outright dishonesty just eliminates any gains that you might make.
"After the Declaration of Independence was signed, Virginia statesman John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson: 'We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?'
Much time has passed since Jefferson arrived for his inauguration. The years and changes accumulate. But the themes of this day he would know: our nation's grand story of courage and its simple dream of dignity.
We are not this story's author, who fills time and eternity with His purpose. Yet His purpose is achieved in our duty, and our duty is fulfilled in service to one another."
Close enough that my point still stands: Bush and almost all Republicans continue to pay deserved homage to our nations founders.
That would be me. (Except that I have voted Phillips, Phillips, Buchanan in the last 3 nationals)
DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS; SAME SH*T --DIFFERENT PILES
I think that you are basically correct in that. But there is a fundamental antithesis between the Collectivist egalitarianism of Martin Luther King, and what the American tradition is all about. The Founding Fathers would have had no truck with King--none!
On the recent Monday holiday, a number of people posted remarks from some of King's less quoted words, claiming to show that he was not pro-Communist, because he took exception to some of the totalitarian tendencies of Communism. In courtesy to those regular posters at this venue, I will accept their point. This does not change the fact that he saw Government as having a duty to level Society; to redistribute wealth through various social interventions, and to force the acceptance of persons on the basis of collectivist determined norms, even in the private sector, even at the expense of rights of free choice, free association and normal human preference. These ideas, if not Communist with a large "C"--and I have never thought that King was a Communist, only that he was used by the Communists and others on the far Left as a rallying figure for their collectivist ideology--certainly embraces the central themes of a Socialist order.
Bush makes a mistake when he reaches out on the basis of such a philosopher! There have been truly great American Negro leaders, such as Booker T. Washington--men who shared the ethos of the American mainstream. Outreach is a perfectly worthy goal, but it should not be on the basis of giving up the farm to save the barn.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
And like Paul Craig Roberts was driving at: Bush will lose his re-election bid if he goes through with his Amnesty and immigrant welfare proposals which is a slap in face to ALL law abiding American citizens.
Same here my friend. Bush is a one world liberal...no doubt about it.
Considering all the hoopla around King - and Chavez is next for sainthood - I respectfully wonder if similar hoopla will be made about Gen. Washington.
There IS a campaign to deconstruct the founders as national symbols. It's intentional and relentless. The opposition to this should be forceful and resolute. And it should come from one man of all people. Instead - and I'm not the only one who's noticed this - we seem to be getting Clinton Lite in the ethnic pandering scene.
You can say that Roberts made an implication out of context - but it is certainly true no big party has been thrown for our seminal icons.
BTTT-great post Reg.
Please clarify who you are talking about in this statement, "Some figures in history, renowned in their day, grow smaller with the passing of time. "
Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen (who voted for you to uphold the values espoused by our Founding Fathers)
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