Thursday, November 25, 2010

A LOOONG Debate on Republican Racism

After posting this status update, I learned two things:

1) History is a liberal's best friend.
2) Being condescending to morons is a debater's greatest perk.


Matthew Rozsa's Status Update

When segregationist George Wallace ran for president as a third-party candidate in 1968, he received ten million votes (more than 13%).

What makes this prescient is that neither he nor the bulk of his supporters openly admitted that their campaign was based on racism; instead they claimed they only opposed "liberals" and "big government."

Sound familiar?

Cheryl Dawn Dearborne
interesting

Kevin Reagan
This is extremely tangential to your misinformed assertion that the Tea Party operates with purely racist intentions.

Jake Emery
I've heard the TEA Party candidates. They're invariably racist.

Matthew Rozsa
Actually it's quite relevant. Although the Democratic Party had a corner market on racist politicking during the first eighty years after the Civil War, the gradual liberalizing of that organization caused it to embrace the civil rights movement, a development which in turn began to shake the once "Solid South" from its previous allegiance.

This trend began in 1964, when the GOP nominated Barry Goldwater in large part due to his opposition to Lyndon Johnson's civil rights legislation; this caused Goldwater to sweep the Deep South (a first for any Republican presidential candidate in almost a century) despite losing the rest of the country by the largest margin in American history (either then or since). It continued in 1972 when Richard Nixon, seeing the success of Wallace's code language in winning racist votes, used it to win the ENTIRE South in his reelection campaign that year. Finally, it was solidified in 1980, when the Republicans cemented its place in the hearts of bigots by nominating Ronald Reagan, a man who had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (denouncing the latter for "humiliating the South"), outspokenly supported South Africa's apartheid regime, and used racially charged euphemisms in his speeches, such as insulting "welfare queens" and denouncing programs that helped racial minorities (like the Fair Housing Act) as socialistic.

In short, a lineal connection can be made between the tactics of the Tea Party and those employed by George Wallace and the Republican movement he influenced (Wallace remained a Democrat his entire life, but the vast majority of his followers - as well as prominent Dixiecrats like Strom Thurmond - defected to the GOP).

If you need further proof, see:
http://riskinghemlock.blogspot.com/2010/10/tea-party-racism.html

Matthew Rozsa
From a strictly logical and evidentiary standpoint, the fact that racism is the primary (if not sole) motivating factor behind the Tea Party is indisputable. Indeed, the material proving this is so overwhelming that I seriously question the motives not only of this movement's members, but of those who defend them.

Kevin Reagan
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16500

Max Price
would tea party members support a man like alan keyes?

Dan Reagan
Great question Max..answer from a man who has been to more than one Tea Party..YES! In fact, I voted for Mr.Keyes in the republican primary in 2000 over GW Bush in Georgia. I would also for Condi Rice. Matt of course in the imaginary world ...he lives in, where I can't even fathom his views/takes on history sometimes..fails to note that A) many blacks attend tea parties and B) The tea party started as a grass roots movement to protest out of control spending and government intrusion into our lives This occurred after a spontaneous outburst on CNBC by Rick Santelli. Red blooded (not red stated) Americans, tired of the Pelosi, Reid, Obama out of control spending, heeded Santelli's call and TAH DAH! The Tea Party sprung up!

Never mind the fact that there are many black tea party activists (One very prominent one whose name escapes me whose written a book about being a black conservative) but leave Matt to his liberal little world, where he studies the fantasizes written by liberal "historians." You see in that world, Rush Limbaugh is a racist, despite the fact he employs a black as his call screener for over 15 years, has given him an on air role and Rush was recently married by a black preacher, a former NFL player who is one of Rush's closest friends. But if the clowns on MSNBC and in the MSM call Rush a racist, then that's good enough for Matt!

Jim Chambers
You're fucking delusional, Matt.

Jake Emery
No, he's not.

Jake Emery
Nice flag, Dan.

Matthew Rozsa
The opposition to my post falls into two categories:

1) Those that cite inaccurate facts.

2) Those that refuse to cite any facts at all.

I'll begin with the first group:

1) To Kevin, whose article is a masterpiece in deliberate distortion and shoddy historical work:

- Any article which contains this sentence in its opening statement automatically should be viewed as suspect by all who believe in even the pretense of objectivity:
"The Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S's: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism."
That aside, however...

- The author conveniently ignores that the Democrats who were responsible for perpetuating segregation and racism in the South were predominantly of the Dixiecrat variety which later abandoned the party because (a) liberals supporting civil rights causes took over that organization and prompted them to walk out in disgust and (b) Republicans like Goldwater in '64, Nixon in '72, and Reagan in '80 all aggressively wooed them. Incidentally, I pointed all of this out in my first blog post; Kevin, being incapable of actually rebutting it, preferred to just ignore that I said it in the first place.

- Although she points out that Eisenhower pushed for the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (a measure that is not widely remembered among civil rights historians today, as it was a much weaker bill than subsequent legislation), she ignores that it was Roosevelt who insisted on including African Americans in the welfare programs of the New Deal despite right-wing opposition, Humphrey who officially began the Dixiecrat bolt from the party when he bravely supported a pro-civil rights plank at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, and both Kennedy and Johnson who supported the civil rights acts that were eventually passed in 1964 and 1965 and are actually regarded by historians of this subject as being the truly pivotal pieces of legislation.

- Although she does mention that Truman desegregated the military, she tries to make it seem like Eisenhower also played a key role in this. If you study his career, you find that he was actually neutral on the subject while he was a commanding officer; his only legacy was in not opposing Truman after his Executive Order was issued, which hardly counts as an act of heroism.

- Although Eisenhower did appoint Chief Justice Warren to the Supreme Court, he was actually unhappy with the latter's support of civil rights causes, and even later said that he felt choosing him for that position was a great mistake. He also did not approve of desegregating the South and only sent troops to Little Rock because their defiance of the Supreme Court was a more pressing issue in his mind than the preservation of their institutions.

- Kennedy voted against the Civil Rights Bill of 1957 because he felt it was too weak to be truly meaningful, much as Dennis Kucinich voted against the health care reform bill (at first) because he felt it wasn't really solving the problems it claimed to confront. Senator Al Gore, Sr. DID oppose it out of racism - but then again, he wasn't any more influential in the party at that time than other Dixiecrats, and I've already discussed their story.

- Kennedy did oppose Martin Luther King's March on Washington because he felt, incorrectly, that it would anger the moderate whites whose support in the Senate he needed to have a chance of passing civil rights legislation, a fact that Rice conveniently overlooks. She also forgets that it was Kennedy who expressed solidarity with Martin Luther King during the presidential campaign of 1960 by intervening to get him out of jail after he was arrested during a civil rights protest, while Richard Nixon - eager to win Southern votes - did nothing. Finally, she ignores that King and the vast bulk of other civil rights leaders considered Kennedy to be one of their greatest friends in the White House, even though they were frustrated by what they perceived as his trepidation on these issues (similar to how liberals feel about Obama today).

- Robert Kennedy did have Martin Luther King wiretapped by the FBI, much as he did countless other Americans. This was a manifestation of McCarthyist impulses (a right-wing movement, not a left-wing one) and was inexcusable; that said, it was also born of red-baiting paranoia, not racism.

- Affirmative action was a liberal program that was merely signed into law by President Nixon, even though the vast bulk of his party opposed it while it was being passed. Besides, I find it curious that Rice tries to make it seem like a Republican initiative, since aren't they the party opposing it today?

- She is lying about Goldwater wanting Southern Democrats to stop passing discriminatory laws. That is simply not accurate.

- She also deliberately distorts Johnson's record. For example, while he did only devote 350 words in his 1965 State of the Union address to the subject of civil rights, that was because he was planning (as everyone in America knew) of delivering another speech of greater length dedicated solely to that subject a couple of months later. That address, the "We Shall Overcome" speech, is one of the most famous in American history, which makes me suspect either Rice's credentials as a historian or her ethics as a conveyor of information.

- I've never heard of the "n---- preacher" line and, frankly, I strongly doubt its veracity.

- The vast majority of Dixiecrats defected to the Republican Party, and to state otherwise is a blatant lie. While there were obviously a few exceptions to the rule - Byrd, Hollings, and Wallace being the most notable ones - statistics have shown that they and their followers eventually fled to the GOP, led by the likes of Strom Thurmond and indicated by the Republican Party's sweeping victories over the South as a direct result of its anti-civil rights candidates in the aforementioned elections. Incidentally, Hollings and Wallace were also renowned as conservative Democrats throughout their career, and were embraced by fellow Republicans at the time while reviled by liberal Democrats.

- The rest of the article is simply a promotion of radical right-wing policies while claiming that they will help black Americans. It doesn't even make rational connections between those policies and their perceived benefits; it just states them as if they are true and then moves on accordingly.

- Just to repeat what I said earlier:

The author conveniently ignores that the Democrats who were responsible for perpetuating segregation and racism in the South were predominantly of the Dixiecrat variety which later abandoned the party because (a) liberals supporting civil rights causes took over that organization and prompted them to walk out in disgust and (b) Republicans like Goldwater in '64, Nixon in '72, and Reagan in '80 all aggressively wooed them. Incidentally, I pointed all of this out in my first blog post; Kevin, being incapable of actually rebutting it, preferred to just ignore that I said it in the first place.

This bears repetition because everything in Kevin's article either (a) repeats what I already wrote about the Democratic Party's right-wing racism for the first eighty years after the Civil War while dishonestly ignoring that I said it or (b) openly lies or distorts the remainder of history.

This, by the way, is NOT me writing as a liberal. This is me writing as a historian who believes in objectivity, something that Rice clearly is not.

Matthew Rozsa
To Dan:

I love how, whenever I present indisputable facts to you, you simply brush them off without ever bothering to directly address them. When I provided you with a lengthy explanation of Obama's economic policies in our last debate, this is what you did (and then, of course, you were shocked when I decided that I wasn't going to react to anything you wrote after that, since apparently you deserve better treatment than that which you give to others). Here you also don't attempt to rebut anything I write (neither does your son, incidentally, although he does provide a piece of right-wing propaganda that would make Dinesh D'Souza proud), but merely say that you don't know where I get it from.

I can answer that question, by the way...

I get it from books. Lots and lots of books. From many different authors from a variety of points-of-view (including, yes, many conservatives). That's because I believe in reading the works of scholars instead of glorified entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and lying demagogues like Newt Gingrich or Frances Rice.

You should try it some time. It'll rock your world.

In addition...

- James Meredith, the African American who was forcibly integrated into the University of Mississippi by President Kennedy in 1962, later became a "self-hating black man", working for Strom Thurmond and endorsing KKK member David Duke when he became the Republican nominee for governor of Louisiana in 1991.

Jews also have individuals like this in our history, like Bobby Fischer, the famous Jewish chess player who later professed admiration for Adolf Hitler, or Nicholas Donin, the medieval French Jew who lied about so-called Jewish atrocities against Christians so that he could rise to power in the French court while his people were persecuted.

Why do I bring these examples up? Because every racial minority has individuals who, for whatever variety of reasons, decide to perpetuate hatred against their own race and become "the good ones" in the eyes of their oppressors. Alan "soldiers should not fight under Obama because his birth certificate isn't real" Keyes is definitely one of them.

- Numerous surveys have been conducted of the Tea Party movement and have unanimously found that there is no black presence to speak of, save for a statistically insignificant (as in a fraction of one percent) handful who fall into the "good one" category mentioned above.

- Tea Party movements began emerging in late 2008, shortly after Obama was elected. Rick Santelli's rant occurred in February 2009. Your chronology doesn't add up.

- If you want an explanation of why the Tea Party is racist, see the article that I recommended in my earlier post. I wrote five pages of proof there and I don't feel repeating it all here, but you are more than welcome to see that piece.

Oh, and unlike you, I provide sources. It's not as hard as you think so long as you read scholarly work... Oh wait a minute, I forgot... Sorry, that was a low blow of me. Really it was. I don't know how I'll sleep tonight.

- Why do we call Rush Limbaugh a racist? Try this:
http://newsone.com/nation/casey-gane-mccalla/top-10-racist-limbaugh-quotes/

To Jim:

I'm not even going to waste my time with you.

Max Price
neat historical information, matt.

Matthew Rozsa
Thanks. Happy Thanksgiving!

Matthew Rozsa
To Dan:

I informed my mother of this conversation and she wanted me to add that, in her opinion, the Tea Party movement is a direct descendant of the Nazis, one which tries to downplay the fact that they just so happened to rise up at the precise moment that a black president rose to power. She finds the parallels to be frightening, and frankly so do I.

I never forget where I get my intelligence (and believe me, even if I tried, she wouldn't let me).

Christina Cruz
I do love the "He has a black friend therefore he cant possibly be racist argument" Also, calling his "screener" "a black" doesnt look too good on your part Dan.

Christina Cruz
Actually, Strom Thurmond used to use that argument all the time, and tote his little black servant friend on television. It was quite sad.

Matthew Rozsa
I'm glad you brought up that point, Christina, since I overlooked it.

It is possible to have friends from minority groups and still hold prejudicial views against them. Indeed, Strom Thurmond was sending money to the illegitimate daughter he fathered with a black mistress while running for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948, while Adolf Hitler made a point of sparing the life of a Jewish doctor who had tended to his mother when she was dying of cancer. These things mean nothing.

Dan Reagan
You know what they say about opinions, they're like what you sit on..everyone has one! You and your mother are entitled to yours! Christina, obviously, you're another ill-informed lib, who probably hasn't listened to 5 minutes of Rush in yo...ur life...so you too can have your opinion. The black man who is his screener, wouldn't have stuck around for as long as he has and been as a good a friend of Rush's if he thought for 5 seconds that Rush was a racist. Secondly, I also pointed out that a man of the cloth, that recently married Rush, is a former NFL player, and one of Rush's dearest friends. When the NFL aided by the bigots in the MSM tried to deny Rush a part ownership of the St.Louis Rams, he went on radio and television defending "my dear friend" saying "I've known this man a very long time and a racist he is not."

Matthew Rozsa
To Dan:

1) I'm not quite sure how saying that my mother and I are entitled to our opinions constitutes a rebuttal, or for that matter even a meaningful addressing, of what we said.

2) Christina actually does do her research. I find it fascinating that you automatically assume that people who don't like your godhead must not understand him.

3) See my latest status update. I make it very clear that there have always been members of different minority groups who betray their own background to show that they're one of "the good ones." Certainly that designation would apply to African-Americans who would work for, marry, or befriend a man who has made as many racist comments as Rush.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/limbaugh.asp

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