Many Americans think of the Republican Party as bigoted and racist -- an image foisted on the public, I believe, by the media. For its own agenda. To make the Democrat Party look good in comparison. Or whatever reason. But media bias is not the point. Rather, I'd like provide some FACTUAL and historical basis as to why the GOP is the party of civil rights and equality, while the Democrat Party is the one of bigotry and racism.
First, here is a comment on the above post from my nephew, a law school graduate and soon-to-be licensed lawyer:
[quote]
Strum Thurman [sic] filibustered the civil rights act. Are you telling me he was a democrat? LBJ passed the civil rights act. Was he a republican? Upon passing the civil rights act, LBJ
confessed he had just lost the south for the democrats for the next 40 years...
It might be longer.
Let's go through this list...
1. Democrats; 2. No clue, but
I'll believe democrats; 3. Ditto; 4. Republicans: Strum Thurman was a democrat
until 1964, when he switched to republican, LBJ passed the legislation, I'm
chalking this up to republican; 5. democrats I guess; 6. both parties,
what was Wallace?; 7. Both world wars were under democrats and Vietnam under
LBJ, which Nixon escalated, gulf war=bush, Iraq and afghan war=bush, democrats
win again.
I guess Obama is responsible for all of this?
I guess Obama is responsible for all of this?
[unquote]
My reaction: Wow,
don’t they teach ANYTHING in colleges or even law schools these days??
It's sad when the shortcomings of our public education
system are so obvious when brought to light.
It's not my nephew's fault; he was fed a pile of mush. For that matter, I wasn’t taught most of this either but had
to learn it on my own.
To begin with, “Dixiecrats” were a remnant of
the segregationist Southern bloc of the Democrat Party, going back to the
Reconstruction Era, and they were indeed racist -- an anachronism by the
1960s. Yes, the following were ALL
racist Democrats: Strom Thurmond (Sen., SC), John
Stennis (Gov., Miss.), George Wallace (Gov., Ga.), Eugene “Bull” Connor (Birmingham Ala., police commissioner) and Orval Faubus (Gov., Ark.) Most won’t know that last name: He was governor during the 1957 Little Rock High
School
Other factoids:
- The last acknowledged (past) member of the KKK in the Senate? Robert Byrd, a Democrat.
- Who segregated the federal civil service? (After it was integrated under Grant, a Republican.) Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat.
- Who integrated the armed services again? Eisenhower, as supreme commander of European forces, later of course a Republican president.
- What
started the Civil War? The election
of
- The “Jim Crow laws” were created by Southern Democrats to keep the former slaves “in their place.” Reconstruction exacerbated the split between the GOP and Democrats over the freed slaves.
- Every black elected to Congress from the southern states from 1865-1880 was a Republican.
- The Constitutional Amendments proposed immediately after the Civil War (the 14th 15th and 16th) were passed and ratified by GOP legislatures.
- The NAACP was formed in 1909 by a group of whites and one black to fight the Jim Crow laws passed and protected by Democrats. In 1913, the NAACP organized opposition to President Wilson (remember, a Democrat) as he introduced racial segregation into federal government policy and hiring.
One of my heroes is Frederick Douglass, esp. after reading
his Narrative (his first autobiographical work.) After escaping slavery, he was first something
of an anarchist – calling for the dissolution of the Republic rather than letting
slavery exist -- from the time he arrived in the Northern states until he read
the US Constitution for himself about 1850 and found it to be an ANTI-slavery
document. Thereafter he declared himself
to be a Republican and eventually became friends with Lincoln .
The Republican Party was formed from the remnants of the
Whig Party and a rising anti-slavery movement in the Northern states during the
1850s. Lincoln
was the VP candidate to John Fremont’s candidacy on the first Republican
presidential ticket in 1856. Democrat
James Buchanan won in a three-way race, but the Lincoln-Hamlin GOP ticket won
in 1860. (Andrew Johnson was the VP in 1864. As a Democrat president -- Lincoln chose him as VP to try to placate southerners -- Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which led in part to his impeachment.
It is not generally known there were SEVERAL “Civil Rights
Acts” after WW2. The least known was the Civil
Rights Act of 1957, supported by President Eisenhower and the Republicans in
Congress. It passed easily in the House
(80% of GOP voted for; 40% of Dems voted against.) In the other chamber, however, the Senate
Majority Leader deliberately sent the bill to the Judiciary Committee where his
friend, a Southern Dixiecrat from Mississippi
named James Eastland, rewrote it beyond recognition, effectively watering it
down. Oh, and the Senate Majority
Leader’s name? Lyndon Johnson. After LBJ became president and the CRA
of 1964 was coming to a vote, he did not stand in the way but instead signed
it. The Senate Leader by then was Mike
Mansfield (D-MT) who was decidedly more moderate and less bombastic than the
showboating Johnson, and much less racist as well. Mansfield manuevered around the obstructionist Sen. Eastland, who was still chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed in the House by a
vote of 270-97. The split by party was
80% of GOP voted for, while about 40% of Dems voted against. The “myth” that the several Civil Rights Acts were
opposed by the GOP is scurrilous. The
overall record shows that since 1933, Republicans had a more positive record on
civil rights than the Democrats. In the
26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of Democrats opposed civil
rights legislation in over 80 percent of the votes. By contrast, the Republican majority favored
civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes.
Interestingly, the Democrat Party has encouraged the myth that
it is the party that consistently supported civil rights in every
case. Not so at all. See: http://www.black-and-right.com/the-democrat-race-lie/. Rather, the Dems are “Johnnies-come-lately”
to the civil rights arena. As an example, the Nineteenth Amendment (women’s suffrage)
was supported largely by Republicans.
NONE of the southern states (those in the defeated Confederacy) approved
the amendment until after it was ratified by the requisite 38 states.
Strom Thurmond is an interesting case. He filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964
as a Democrat. He was angered by
Democrat senators compromising to pass the bill (the vote was 60-15 – many
abstained) and he then switched parties. You might say he was "conservative" because he favored “states’ rights.” Unfortunately, that term has forever been
linked to segregation. Many of the
Dixiecrats did NOT join the GOP but instead formed their own caucus, walking
out from the 1948 Democrat National Convention when a civil rights plank was
added to the platform, to the credit of Hubert Humphrey. Thurmond was selected as presidential candidate of the “States’ Rights Democrat
Party” in 1948 election. (Part of their platform was “We call upon all
Democrats and upon all other loyal Americans who are opposed to totalitarianism
at home and abroad to unite with us in ignominiously defeating Harry S Truman,
Thomas E. Dewey and every other candidate for public office who would establish
a Police Nation in the United States of America.” Wow, and they say today’s TEA Party is
extreme!) The break-away Dixiecrats
later returned to the Democrat party.
[As an aside here, it always rankles Dems when someone points out
that environmental protection has long been part of the GOP’s platform,
starting with Teddy Roosevelt’s proposals to protect the great Western forests
and natural wonders through a National Park system, and continuing to Richard
Nixon’s establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. Hey, “conservation” is part of
“conservatism”!]
[Another aside, regarding which party's presidents took the nation into war the most often. They were Wilson, FDR, Truman and Kennedy for the Dems. George H W Bush and George W Bush involved the US in Iraqi wars with the approval of the Senate. There is were the latest foray into Libya and that would be a Democrat again.]
All of the above is fact. In summary, the Republicans have been a protector of civil rights; the Democrats historically
opposed statutory protections. Somehow,
the perception of those roles was reversed and it occurred about 1964, which
was the real awakening on civil rights and the initial roll-out of LBJ’s “Great
Society.” For whatever reason, call it
laziness on the part of the GOP or the unfair demonization of Barry Goldwater
about that time, the Dems under HHH, LBJ, JFK and RFK grabbed the high ground on
civil rights. The Democrat-held House
and Senate of the 60s also pushed through massive largess to the poor in the
form of welfare, food stamps and Medicaid.
Heck, even I was leaning Democrat from 1960, when my 5th grade class
wanted JFK to beat Nixon, until 1976 when I voted for Carter. (Yes, it’s true: I was suckered by a
politician who offered 'hope and change' – 36 years ago!)
My theory on how the Democrat Party became champions of the black
and Hispanic voters -- and thereby won a large majority of their votes -- came
about through those Great Society programs.
The votes were basically ‘bought.’
Pretty simple, but the simplest explanations are usually the right ones.
The Democrat Party has been the party where voters just feel
it’s on the right side of issues; there’s no rationale behind it. Three prime examples:
- Everyone
“needs” medical care so let’s have the government provide it and everyone
will pay into the system, and voila the nation is healthier!
That couldn’t be farther from the truth. The nation will be poorer, certainly, but healthier? Not possible. Spending more money isn’t the answer because prices will certainly rise as patients ignore the costs since the government is footing the bill, OR prices will be clamped down -- as is currently happening -- and physicians will decline to cover those under the government's plan, resulting in rationed care in order to treat as many critically-ill patients as possible. Those on the plan will have long waits to see a doctor, if they can find one. - Everyone “needs” an education
to succeed, so the government should finance college for anyone who wants
it!
Two problems with this: No, everyone does not need an education to succeed – people succeed in different areas, which could be as an air conditioning technician or truck driver. Hey, we need plumbers in addition to lawyers and doctors! Secondly, there is no cost containment when the government just funds whatever the private market demands, in this case universities. The price of a college semester has skyrocketed, just as the federal government assumed funding of - Collective
bargaining is a right of every worker so therefore all government workers
should be organized and represented by unions!
This is a path to ruin where one side of the ‘bargaining’ is management -- also known as “politicians” – whose campaigns for reelection are funded by the very same unions who sit across the table! There is a serious conflict of interest right off the top. The voter is hardly represented in the ‘bargaining.’ Even that great liberal FDR wanted federal employees barred from organizing.
The tide is turning as more people find out the Liberal
mantra of “more, give us more” is costing too much. The poverty level has not budged in a span of
50 years under a Great Society of high taxes and high spending. The poor have remained poor. Schools have not prospered or succeeded under
a wash of money. As an example, the Washington
DC
In general, the answer to EVERY problem isn’t "more government." The answer will usually be "more individual responsibility," both to build your own success and to help others where there is a need. The Federal Government should do what it does
best, such as coin money, provide defense and roads, operate national postal
and judicial systems, and protect our freedoms. It should leave education,
health care and poverty programs to state and local governments and agencies. Those will in turn relegate or defer to local agencies and organizations. We will get along just fine looking after ourselves
and each other in our communities.
Thanks, Congress, but no thanks.
So finally, Dear Reader, after all that, if anything above doesn’t
ring true then please research it for yourself. Never take anyone’s word on anything. Could professors have been incorrect on
at least one or two points? Did the student check out what they said to verify most of it?
My opinion is the universities today are turning out graduates who think
just like their liberal professors -- not altogether a good thing.
Some “food for thought.”
Some “food for thought.”
And no one said “Obama is responsible for all of
this.” No one blames the current administration for creating the current situation. He didn't improve things much or bring together all Americans as we'd hoped.
At this point, people should be thinking for
themselves -- at least some of the time.
JDE
