Posted on 06/13/2002 5:56:54 AM PDT by SJackson
I agree with your analysis. When I referred to "kick your sister", I was talking about the operational-level programme, if you will, that was carried forward from the 1950's. Or even, if you like, from the moment in the 1940's when a young Hubert Humphrey stood up in the Senate to attack the Dixiecrats on civil rights. I wish someone would revisit those initial moves of the Democratic Left toward the Civil Rights Movement in the terms you outline, as a flanking maneuver designed to drive the Mossbacks from their committee strongholds and open the door for socialism.
At the grand-strategic level, I think we agree that the Civil Rights Movement was about socialism, and that it meant the displacement of the South from the Democratic coalition in favor of black bloc-voters in the cities of the North, who had shown what they could do for the Democratic Party. Hence the emphasis on voting rights for blacks in the South: their Northern sponsors knew they would be 90% straight-ticket Democrats and support socialist measures and candidates when Southern Democrats would not.
The Southern senators were always interested in national affairs, even the later ones who replaced the old string-tie segregationist pols, like Sam Nunn of Georgia and Johnston of Louisiana, who replaced Allen Ellender, and John Stennis of Mississippi. They were intelligent, educated, deeply learned in national-defense and other issues -- and they wouldn't vote right. They always voted for defense issues, like their sometime leader Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who was not a Southerner himself but similarly helped constitute the conservative wing of the Democratic Party -- when it still had one.
The reviewers tell us, btw, that Robert Caro's new book, Master of the Senate, describes how Lyndon Johnson opened that door for the Northern senators by destroying the committee chairmen's power and creating the Senate leadership we know today. In the 1940's, the majority and minority whips were virtual relic positions comparable to Britain's "stick-in-waiting". It was Johnson who changed that, Johnson who opened the doors to the 1957 Civil Rights Act, and Johnson who collected for that small gesture by accepting the Vice Presidency......and then whaddayaknow, suddenly he's the President of the United States, just what he always wanted. And as Theodore White tells us in Making of the President 1964 (p. 64), Johnson was already making the first moves on the Budget that would guarantee his reelection while Jack Kennedy's body lay cooling in the Capitol Rotunda, while being careful to cultivate the public impression that the government's normal business was in respectful suspension until after the New Year.
If you want to nail down the actual date the planning for this started,you will have to go back to the early 1920's. The KKK march on Washington,DC flat scared the HELL out of the old-time northeastern elitist families that controlled and benefitted from our government policies. The saw the south "rising again" politically,and were terrified they would lose the priveledged positions the Civil War assured them. It was obvious the southern Dim politicians were well organized,and that they had not only had a different agenda than insure the Rockefellers,Mellons,Cargagies,and others retained their wealth,but also had grudges against the way these families came into the south after the war and used the power of the government to forclose on farms and businesses so they could buy them at a penny on the dollar.
At THAT time the KKK was really a "government in hiding". This had become a neccessity after the CW because the northeners had installed their own judges,sheriffs,and even congressmen in office,and absolutely NONE of these people had any interest at all in protecting the rights of white southerners. They were basically put into place to serve as "protection" for the northern carpet bagger. The KKK was formed and stepped in to fill this gap. If there was some type of dispute with local authorities, it did you no good to go to the local sheriff. He was appoited by the "lords of the north"m,and was only there to protect them and get his "cut". Go to the KKK and make your case,and suddenly your problems dissapeared. The same was true of things as simple as wife beating or child abuse. The local "authorities" didn't give a damn about that,but the KKK did. They would come by and horsewhip the offender,and promise to come back and hang him if the conduct continued. This was VERY efffective,as there was no appeal or lawyer who could get yo off from that sentence,and they weren't playing.
Anyhow,the above illustrates the "how and why" behind the KKK gaining so much political power by the early 1920's. If you weren't a Dim candidate,you didn't get elected to ANY office in the south at that time. If you didn't have the backing of the KKK,you didn't get even get to run for office. The northern elites were about to have their apple cart overturned,and they couldn't allow this to happen. The solution to their problem was to demonize both the KKK AND any southern politicians who were strongly connected to it.
By the early 1950's,the FBI were doing everything BUT officially running the KKK. The joke used to be that if you needed a FBI agent,the easiest way to find one was go to a Klan meeting. I think we all know what happened after that.
I wonder how he could live with himself. If accounts of the last years of his life are to be believed, LBJ had a very difficult time living with himself, as he was not a complete sociopath like Bill Clinton. My understanding is that LBJ let his hair grow long and stopped taking care of himself and suffered long depressions. Of course, how much of that was regret and how much of that was missing the political power he used to wield like a sledgehammer I do not know.
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