The Dixiecrat Platform

The Smoking Gun ^ | August 14, 1948 | The States Rights Democratic Party

[Bluntpoint]

So, tell us what your town would look like if you were in charge?

Would blacks and whites have the right to live and work in peace together? Could blacks shop, work, live next to whites. Could blacks date and marry whites?

Does God view people differently based on their skin color?

[sneakypete]

So, tell us what your town would look like if you were in charge?

This is not a valid question. I don't live in or even near a town (by choice),and I have zero desire to be in charge of anything at anytime.

Would blacks and whites have the right to live and work in peace together? Could blacks shop, work, live next to whites. Could blacks date and marry whites?

Everybody would have the same rights,regardless of race,religion,or social position,as long as they are US citizens. This does NOT mean that everybody will always be treated equally be everybody else. People of all races,ethnic,and religious groups have a right to discriminate against anyone else they want on a personal level,at any time they want. They just don't have the right to cause anyone else to come to physical harm.

Does God view people differently based on their skin color?

Since I'm, a non-believer,you need to find somebody else to answer that question.

[x]

Thanks for the link. I was looking for the other platforms just the other day. AmericanPresidency.org looks like a great site. I have bookmarked the archive of political platforms. Unfortunately the third party programs stop at 1924. It might be interesting to see just what more recent third party candidates have run on. There was a large reference set of volumes released by Arthur Schlesinger a few years ago, but library hours are restricted and the Internet is always open and searchable.

The thing about ideas is you can take them as units, as stackable black boxes; or else you can open them up and try to find out what's inside. Lott doesn't seem to be a very inquisitive fellow. He has these boxes like "Southern way of life" or "Limited Government," that he cares about deeply, but he's incurious about what may be "inside."

I'd say Lott was more of a spirited temperament -- or a manipulative cast of mind, than a reflective or analytical one, but I suspect we're all like that about some things. We can break down other people's basic ideas into what we take to be their components, but our own basic ideas are foundation or the indissoluble atoms of our mental world.

[PresidentDavis]

Not surprisingly, many are missing the point here.

First of all, there is more to the Dixiecrat platform than segregation---which is the way the media is overwhelmingly presenting the case. The platform was about the right of a state to be sovereign within its own borders. Show me anywhere in the Constitution where the states gave the federal government the authority to come into their states, invade those states, and change the laws of those states that effected only the citizens of said states.

The segregation element of the platform, most notably in clauses 4 and 5, were an element of those specific times. While I certainly do not approve of those clauses in the sense of a support of that specific policy, I do defend the right of a state to make laws within its own borders.

Claiming that the federal government has a right to come in and force their will on any issue that involves a purely state matter---even if we disagree with that specific state law--shows the federal government usurping power it simply does not possess. All power the federal government possesses comes from specific power grants from the states outlined in the Constitution. Taking additional power to itself---which was what was happening in 1948 (and is much worse today)---is clearly unconstitutional, and this was the real reason for the birth of the Dixiecrats to begin with.

Today we have two parties that believe in big government, don't respect the Constitution, and have given us a government totally out of control.

[Bluntpoint]

So, if a black purchases the plot of land next to yours, no problem?

If no problem, then we are on the same page.

[x]

The only mistake the South made was that they should have freed the slaves first and deported en masse. Lincoln had the same idea...too bad John Wilkes Booth killed him or he'd deported the slaves back to Central America and Africa. We'd have no racial problems in this country, because they would've been here.

Not true. Booth heard or heard of a speech in which Lincoln refered to the possibility of giving Black veterans and educated Blacks the vote. Booth decided at that point to go through with his assassination plans. Resettlement of freedmen had been abandoned some time before.

[Bluntpoint]

"The segregation element of the platform, most notably in clauses 4 and 5, were an element of those specific times. While I certainly do not approve of those clauses in the sense of a support of that specific policy, I do defend the right of a state to make laws within its own borders. "

That said, the Dixiecrats led the charge on segregation.

Compare the platform of the Democratic party with the Dixiecrats in 1948, the only real difference is segregation.

States rights, in this instance, was just an excuse to defend the indefensible.

[Bluntpoint]

"The only mistake the South made was that they should have freed the slaves first and deported en masse. Lincoln had the same idea...too bad John Wilkes Booth killed him or he'd deported the slaves back to Central America and Africa. We'd have no racial problems in this country, because they would've been here."


What about those who legally immigrated since the time of freeing the slaves?

[muawiyah]

You missed both the logic and the humor. I simply said I prefer mandatory inter-racial marriages. Presuming you get married, then we make the conditions mandatory.

In other parts of the thread they are discussing the government's abandonment of the old standards (which presumably resulted in assimilated immigrants). Logically, then, if the government has abandoned old standards, marriage need not be engaged in as well, ergo, something which does not exist which is mandatory is ......

Well, it's something for the "blue noses" to break their eyeteeth on eh?!

BTW, I live in a neighborhood full of immigrants. None of their kids are out shacking up. If the parents feel that it's time for the kid to get married, they bring in the bride (or the groom as the case may be) and a marriage is performed on the spot. Kind of interesting. I would guess that about 3/4 of the folks in my neighborhood have arranged marriages. There have been a couple of divorces. For some strange reason the immigrants here do not wish to engage fully in some of America's more bizarre customs, e.g. at will divorce!

[Ken in Eastman]

If I knew Eleanor Smeal personally (shudder, shudder retch, puke), as Trent Lott knows Strom Thurmond personally, then yes there might be other reasons.

Regards,

Ken

[sneakypete]

So, if a black purchases the plot of land next to yours, no problem?

I don't give a damn who buys it,as long as they leave me alone,and don't expect me to help them pay for it.

[muawiyah]

"If I knew Eleanor Smeal personally (shudder, shudder retch, puke,)

Our thread ends, at last, on a note of real terror!

[nicollo]

Third parties are interesting beasts. They come about when neither of the two parties accommodate a particular dissent. In 1948, we have Southern Democrats objecting to their party acting like Republicans. Third parties invariably go away when either but usually both of two things happen: 1) one of the major parties absorbs the dissent by adopting its ideas or its outrage; 2) the issue driving the third party dissappears. Anderson and Perot fell to no. 2. The People's Party of the 1880s fell to the first condition, thanks to William Jennings Bryan. The Dixiecrats fell to both in that the issue of segregation was driven away by Ike (and adopted by Johnson) and the issues of States Rights and opposition to Federal centralization was adopted by the Republican Party.

The Republican party today has a legitimate claim for States Rights. States Rights, we are told is segregation. I've said it before: the South fought the wrong battle for State Rights. Too bad they punted it by tying it up in slavery and, then, segregation. That left it to the Republicans to adopt. Southerners turned to the Republican party in legitimate expression of their legitimate defense of States Rights. No where can it be found that the Republican party supports segregation. We hear from the morons that Republicans speak in "code" about racism and segregations. That's nonsense, demogoguery and stupid. It's also desparate.

The Republican complicity in all this comes of Reconstruction and its subsequent abuse of the black vote. Johnson could never have absorbed blacks into his party had Republicans not used them for so long as a means of controlling internal politics, particularly at the conventions.

Btw, the 1948 complaints about government desegregation wouldn't have been an issue had that Democratic icon, Woodrow Wilson, not segregated the civil service.

*Bumping* El Gato's #50, and calling out to inkling's #58, Dems_R_Losers's #75 and Ken in Eastman's #115.

[kcvl]

"Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them." -- Mary Frances Berry, Chairwoman, US Commission on Civil Rights

[kcvl]

Carl Malone owns the property directly behind me. It doesn't bother me in the least. A black doctor and his family own a home about four blocks from me. Doesn't bother me at all. If this is all this argument is about I'm afraid I don't get it.

[kcvl]

"The Medicaid system must have been developed by a white male slave owner. It pays for you to be pregnant and have a baby, but it won't pay for much family planning." -- Jocelyn Elders

[kcvl]

"There's no great, white bigot; there's just about 200 million little white bigots out there." -- USA Today columnist Julienne Malveaux

[kcvl]

"White folks was in caves while we was building empires... We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it." -- Rev. Al Sharpton in a 1994 speech at Kean College, NJ

[kcvl]

"The white race is the cancer of human history." -- Susan Sontag


"Reparations are a really good way for white people to admit they're wrong." -- Zack Webb, University Of Kentucky NAACP

[kcvl]

The white man is our mortal enemy, and we cannot accept him. I will fight to see that vicious beast go down into the lake of fire prepared for him from the beginning, that he never rise again to give any innocent black man, woman or child the hell that he has delighted in pouring on us for 400 years." -- Louis Farrakhan who campaigned for congresswoman Cynthia McKinney in 2002, City College audience in New York


"The old white boys got taken fair and square." -- San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown after winning an election