Telling it like it is
This is the final article I have from the Calpatriot.org web site. It was printed right after Trent Lott made his comments during the late Strom Thurmond's birthday celebration that caused him to be stipped of his position of senate majority leader.
So for the final article in this installment here's:
Telling It Like It Is
Orginally posted at:
http://www.calpatriot.org/february03/likeitis.html
How the vangaurd of civil rights is losing the PR war
Poor Trent Lott.
One day, fourth in line for the Presidency, the next,
a humiliated, ostracized senator stripped of his
leadership role.
As far as slip-ups go, this one was a doosy, and it
was not long before pundits filled the airwaves laying
criticism at both Lott and the Republican Party that
for years had installed him as a member of their
senior elite.
As this drama played out on the national scene it is
easy to understand how, to some, this could only
solidify the belief that the Republican Party is
comprised of a sordid collection of dodgy old white
men. The NAACP was quick to lambaste the former Senate
leader and make connections with his verbal flatulence
and the fact that blacks vote overwhelmingly for the
Democratic Party. And our dear friends at Revolution
Books did not hesitate to put up a sign depicting Lott
with the caption “Yet Another Reason To Hate The
System”, as if to say, with a winking of their
eye, that those “wily, racist Republicans were
at it again.”
Perhaps. But it wasn’t always this way.
Long ago in ancient times (well, the mid 19th
Century), the Republican Party was the repository of
the black vote. So long as Lincoln stood up for black
rights, the black voters felt willing to stand up for
Lincoln.
Throughout the ensuing tumultuous years, the Great
War, the heyday of the flappers, the Great Depression,
and the cataclysm of the Second World War, the
Democratic and Republican Parties roughly split the
black vote. Even as recent a Republican as Dwight D.
Eisenhower garnered 40 percent of the black vote,
evidence that blacks did indeed “like Ike”
just as much as the next guy.
Things turned grim, and for true conservatives,
utterly shameful, during the 1950s and 60s. The Civil
Rights Movement flourished in America, despite water
hoses, German Shepards, and hooded hooligans. At the
same time, Southern Dixiecrats, infuriated with the
path that Democratic presidents were taking their
party, bolted across the aisle to the Republicans. Why
the party accepted them is open for debate. Perhaps it
was due to alleged racism, or the desire to win key
southern votes at any cost, but it also presents the
possibility that states’ rights and local
autonomy really are important principles for
conservatives -- not just window dressings for racism.
Either way, for whatever reasons, faced with all this
societal upheaval, the Republican Party found itself
perceived as squarely on the wrong side of history.
But, the word “perceived” really is the
operative word here. “Compassionate
Conservatism” isn’t just a new catchphrase
coined by a certain Republican President to fool the
nonwhite population into voting for the Republicans.
In fact, Republican legislators were more likely to
vote for the 1964 Civil Right’s Act than their
Democratic counterparts, and opposition to segregation
wasn’t just the domain of those left of center.
Shocking yes, I know.
Yet, over the years, the Democratic Party and those of
the political Left have succeeded in developing the
mainstream perception that they alone hold true to the
dictum that “all men are created equal”,
and that they alone are the true heirs to the legacy
of Dr. Martin Luther King.
The sad truth is that this perception could not be any
further from the truth. After the passage of the 1964
Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act one year
later, it became quickly, and sadly, apparent that the
formal end of racial preferences had run its course.
Before the ink dried on these two momentous pieces of
legislation there were clamors for a new form of
racial preferences, only this time the positions were
reversed. While the original system both formally and
informally elevated whites blacks, the new form of
“anti-racism” promoted discrimination
against whites for the benefits of blacks.
Despite the lunacy of redressing discrimination by
enacting further discrimination, it is now a commonly
held tenet in American society that support for these
new racial preferences is synonymous with support for
civil rights and anti-racism, and when it comes to
backing this new system of racial preferences, be it
called affirmative action or multiculturalism, it is
the Democrats who are the most vocal of the two major
political parties.
This unfortunate, yet widely held belief that equates
the use of racial preferences with anti-racism, and
consequently elevates the Democratic Party as the sole
bastion of equal rights, has done much to ensure an
almost complete Democratic monopoly on the black vote.
Yet such misplaced support is not only deleterious to
the Republican Party, it is also harmful for blacks
and indeed to the that aspiration of a diverse,
unified America.
The use of such blatant racial discrimination as that
employed during affirmative action’s run, in one
instance equating skin color as a more important
qualifier than perfect SAT scores for admission into
the University of Michigan, only exacerbates relations
between all races. Black favoritism and the ensuing
white backlash can only feed off of each other, each
reinforcing the most basest loathsome of stereotypes
held by their respective proponents.
And yet, there is a way out. The idea of a
multi-racial America and the well-being of
African-Americans would be far better served under a
conservative agenda of the sort long advocated by the
Republican Party. The spirit of the Civil Rights
Movement must be rekindled such that the merits of
individual achievement are not cheapened by the
lowered expectations of race. All Americans must be
judged according to their ability, not to what box
they might have checked on the last census form.
Whereas serious debate can occur as to how much social
services should be provided to help the less fortunate
have a leg up, or what sort of outreach to
disadvantaged groups are acceptable and what sort
smack of reverse-discrimination, the basic starting
premise of a color-blind social policy can only help
the situation, not harm it. Contrast that with the
policies supported by the multiculturalists and the
Democrats, whose policies of racial favoritism can
only exacerbate feelings between this nation’s
ethnic groups.
True conservatives should be lauded for their
remarkable moral consistency throughout the twists and
turns of race in America. Only conservatives have
consistently opposed racial preferences throughout the
tumult of the past 50 years, taking a stance against
it when applied favorably to any race, not just one in
particular. Recalling Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.’s famous dream that his children will
“live one day in a nation where they will not by
judged by the color of their skin, but by the content
of their character,” one can see that it is the
Republican Party who most closely adheres to the
Reverend’s noble aspiration.
There's proably a hell of a lot more information floating around opn the subject than this, but for now this will be it. However, If I find more articles like the one above I will post them.
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