Don Feder Gets Trenchant On The Lott Affair

Don Feder Com ^ | 12/22/02 | Don Feder

[Protagoras]

How old are you?

[Chancellor Palpatine]

In my 5th decade of life. Why does it matter to you?

[Jhoffa_]

How many Americans, of all color have a clue what is in the Constitution?

My opinion?

Very few, either black or white.

But the blacks, they know it didn't offer them equal protection for a long, long time. And that's all they have to know to hate (or maybe just simply distrust) it.

I certainly don't agree, as I said right now that's the only thing separating us from the third world hell holes we all cringe at. We're all in the same boat now.

I can understand it though and we compound this error by not teaching civics as we should.

IMHO.

[Poohbah]

Not true. Harry Truman nearly lost the Cold War for us at the outset by sabotaging our Free Chinese Christian led Kuomantang allies and thereby ensuring a takoever of mainland China by Mao's Red Army in 1949.

Chiang Kai-Shek did far more to bring that unhappy state of affairs about than Truman could ever do.

[Theodore R.]

As I recall, it was the HST State Department that deliberately withheld supplies that Congress had voted for the Nationalist Chinese. This action, akin to treason under the later Iran-Contra rules, sealed the fate of the anti-communists in China. The State Department claimed that Chiang was "corrupt."
Also many uninformed Americans and forgetful politicians (like Goldwater and Reagan) seemed to overlook the scandals that plagued the HST administration.
And HST was the originator of the "no-win war." We are still paying the price for his poor Korean strategy. Even this week, North Korea is threatening to blow up the world. No, a reasonable reading of history refutes the greatness of HST. That is why I have never been "wild about Harry."

[moonhawk]

First of all your first sentence doesn't make sense.

Second, I don't think I'm the one in the minority here.

Third, you still haven't answered the question.

[Republic of Texas]

Don't confuse TLB with the facts. He's immune from logic. he's a Bush hata' you know.

[Auntie Dem]

Well, if the descendants of former slaves are due reparations, I say they should be paid in Confederate currency. Or give them 40 "achers" and a jackass. Now how are we going to divvy up Jesse Jackson among approx. 20 million reparees?

[Protagoras]

Matter? It doesn't matter. I just saw your childish profile page and your childish notions as posted here and wondered if you were also chronologically childish.

[Jhoffa_]

I just saw your childish profile page and your childish notions as posted here and wondered if you were also chronologically childish.

I just thought it was gay..

[Theodore R.]

Something else: ALL or virtually all southern politicians were segregationists in 1948. Even as late as 1966, most southern politicians were still nominal segregationists. The Republican candidate for governor of GA in 1966, Congressman Howard "Bo" Callaway, opposing the overtly segregationist Lester Garfield Maddox, refused to renounce segregation. Callaway led in the GA popular vote but fell short of a majority, and the segregationist legislature then chose segregationist Maddox. I believe that many GA Republicans now say that Maddox was the best governor of their lifetimes, considering some of the characters who came after him. But they don't say that because Maddox was a segregationist.

As far as Senators Al Gore, Sr., and William Fulbright, they were NOMINAL segregationists. I personally think both men decried segregation, but it was too risky during their tenure in the Senate to denounce segregation. Had they done so, they would have likely lost renomination to a segregationist Democrat in their next primary election. We later learned, after his death, that the MS Democrat Senator James O. Eastland was a segregationist only for political reasons. He had been contributing to the NAACP all of those years! Thurmond switched to the GOP in 1964. He remained segregationist only until 1970, after which he dropped his segregationist position. By 1970, there were no more segregationist politicians in the South -- in either party, to my knowledge.

[Auntie Dem]

The last stat I heard was 72 cents of every welfare dollar went to the administrators while only 28 cents went to the "needy" individual. Now, who do you think those administrators are? Democrat government employees. No wonder they want a welfare state--they profit from it.

As to whether whites got "most" of that 28 cents, it is probably true, but in relation to their proportion of the population whites get far less than do the "others".

[Chancellor Palpatine]

God forbid my profile seem [shudder] gay.

Here's the rewrite I'd been thinking of for a few days:

I'll let this be my set of defining sentiments on FR:

1. Trent Lott meant exactly what we thought he meant at Strom's birthday party, and confirmed it during his interview on BET when he talked of race, immoral leadership in the South and admitted that he was part of that.

2. There is no objective standard by which anyone can state that government imposed segregation and the Jim Crow laws were good.

3. There is no objective standard by which anyone could say that opposing the end of segregation and the Jim Crow laws was good.

4. There is no objective standard by which anyone can say that the systematic exclusion of a race of people from the economy was good.

5. There is no objective standard by which anyone can say that opposition to full voting rights by blacks was good.

6. That century of apartheid that followed the Civil War left a stain on our history - and there are many people alive today who remember what that was like. It isn't remote and long past - so when blacks cringe over the type of remarks made by Lott, or by talk of states rights, don't moan that they're being PC.

7. It isn't PC pandering to feel some sense of shame over the things people in our parents' and grandparents' generation did. My folks were Wallace voters in '68 - something they're not proud of now. I brought my own grandmother up short when she tried to support Trent Lott based on a very little knowledge and a lot of stored up racial vitriol.

[Jhoffa_]

God forbid my profile seem [shudder] gay.

I am sorry..

Lose the "puppy dog" stuff, talk about football and spit allot.

(I hate football also, but when in Rome..)

[Protagoras]

Golly I feel bad now that I know what a great person you are. Anything else you are against that breaks new ground? Like murder? Or the holocaust?

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Mock all you want - it seemed like it was an important subject for some fringe FReepers and a former Senate Majority Leader to reconsider.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

I'll go you one better - cheap beer and even cheaper mass produced cigars. No gay guy worth his salt would talk about PBR and one of those nasty a**ed Phillies with adoration.

[BlackElk]

Ping for later

[Protagoras]

It only seemed that way.

[Jhoffa_]

PS: I don't support discrimination based on race at all. Like I said, it's not consistent with the spirit of our constitution, the founding of our nation or even the BOR's own wording.

Something had to give, it was the elephant in the living room that can only go unadressed for so long.

That said though, I think allot of conservatives used the occasion of Lott's (admittedly stupid, no argument) comment as an occasion to lynch him for many other failings.

While these peripheral issues, in and of themselves might well constitute valid a reason for his removal, they weren't addressed. Just his comments on the Thurmond matter.

That's cowardly and dishonest in my opinion.

And I hate Trent Lott.