A few days ago the Governor of Virgina designated April as a month to celebrate the Confederacy and their treason against the United States. I was not surprise to see Republicans from all over enthusiastically follow his lead this weekend as they gathered in New Orleans for a celebration of the founding fathers of the Confederacy in an over-hyped gathering know as Southern Republican Leadership Conference.
It is a bit ironic that the Party of Abraham Lincoln has been captured by the deadenders of the Confederacy–but it has. The Confederacy was one of the evil movements of history and I do not say that lightly. It was a movement based on the buying and selling of humans beings and the theft of their liberty and labor. This is the fact of it and no amount of myth weaving, fable spinning and even repeated screenings of Birth of a Nation can change that reality.
Reconstruction almost killed the Confederacy, but it found a host in the Democratic Party. For decades, it was the Democrats–especially those from the South–who kept the goals of the Confederacy alive. Over time the Confederacy lost their grip on the Democratic Party and when LBJ passed Civil Rights and Voting Rights Legislation, the spirit of the Confederacy went looking for a new political host. For a time this racist ideology found a home with the third party efforts of George Wallace, but it was Richard Nixon who thought he could invite this ideology of hate into the Republican Party and control it. He was wrong.
Now the Confederacy controls Nixon’s Party so completely that they would kick Dick out for being a squish. Reagan would get the boot as well.
There is just so much hatred and stupid driving the modern Republican Party. Bob McDonnell’s proclamation about Confederate History month was a ‘tell’ and so was the highly scripted ‘rebel yell’ of the SRLC. Lincoln’s Republican Party is dead. Like in a bad science fiction or horror film it has been taken over by a malevolent spirit: the Confederacy.
So in honor of Confederate History Month it is time to update the logo of the GOP:
Cheers
dengre
Mike Kay
O, I wish I was in the land of cotton
Old times there are not forgotten
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand
To live and die in Dixie
Away, away,
Away down south in Dixie!
madmommy
It is embarassing as a southerner to see this crap, but it never seems to go away. Before all the “let ’em go”, “screw the south” comments begin, please know that there are plenty of people who live in the south and love our home. The south gave America Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and Eudora Welty. The south is the birthplace of the blues. We’re not all knuckle-dragging, cousin-humping, toothless, ignorant rednecks. It just seems that way sometimes.
Wannabe Speechwriter
So I posted the TNC essay about the GOP being proud of being ignorant on my Facebook page. I got this response from a Republican acquaintance:
You may now proceed to laugh.
On a related note, I think this shows why Steele has a secure job.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@madmommy:
This is true.
Uloborus
You are a very funny man, Dennis! I still think racism is just a minor element in the GOP and even the Confederate movements, though. I mean, it’s there, but the driving force is tribalism. It can come out as racism, but it’s more often classism, religious zealotry, or regionalism.
And with the Confederate celebrators, I think it’s the latter. The South lost. For people who value the ‘us vs. them’ mindset more than anything else, this just rankles. They don’t CARE why the South fought. They only care that their side should have won, and they will loyally support their side and celebrate them as heroes. And the Confederates must be their side, because it was a clear North vs. South conflict.
binzinerator
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
Liberty60
There was this surprisingly good read from David Boaz in Reason
about the misplaced nostalgia on the Right about some fabled lost age of freedom and liberty. He points out that there never was a time when some large group of Americans wasn’t being oppressed in some way or another.
He also notes that the more conservatives wail about the loss of freedom, the more people really suspect that they want to return to the antebellum South.
This sums up for me why I have no other explanation for the Tea Party other than subconscious racism. It isn’t the deficit, they were silent about it for 30 years; it isn’t overly powerful Government, they approved of wiretapping and imprisonment without trials.
They wail about losing “their” America, and it just seems that they really long for a day when people like Sarah and Todd Palin sat at the front of the bus and everyone else knew their place.
Dennis G.
madmommy
This is not a screw the South post.
It is a Fuck the Confederacy post and fuck all the horse shit mythology about the honorable ‘lost cause’ that feeds this beast.
I lived in Georgia for decades. The South is close to my heart but the Confederacy is a toxic ideology that should be condemned. It belongs on the ash-heap of history.
I think that one should be able to condemn the Confederacy without having that extrapolated into a broad-brush attack on Southerners and even Southern culture.
My apologies if my point was not clear.
Cheers
BethanyAnne
@madmommy: And Molly Ivins :)
justme
It will never cease to amaze me that so many of the people who fetishize the stars and bars also try the hardest to wrap themselves in the American flag. I’m sorry, but you can have the one, or you can have the other. If you really want to cleave to the dead Confederacy, fine. You cannot, at that point, call yourself a good American. I seem to remember a little war about that.
Frankly, I have a hard time understanding why anybody would want to fly both if they had any understanding of them. How one can pretend to lay claim to a thing and its opposite at the same time is a mystery. To assert loyalty to a nation, and fly a flag of treason is truly bizarre. That it continues to be fashionable to this day is appalling.
I suppose I answered my own question with the “if they had any understanding of them” phrase, but it still upsets me.
Mike S
I think what surprises me most is that the country as a whole doesn’t see this. It’s not like they hide it. Hell, you have idiot congress critters calling it “the war of Northern agression” right there in the well of the house.
Jager
Jesus H Christ am I glad my Scotch Irish ancestors went to New England rather than the south, “cuz “ah cudah bean wonna theem assholes”…I do like the blues and barbeque, however, also, anyway
iriedc
I expect I’ll be seeing this on teeshirts, when I go over the DC border into Northern Virgina, before long. Worn without any sense of irony (or history).
Hope you have the copyright.
MikeJ
@madmommy:
We moved the fuck out because we couldn’t stand being around southrons.
binzinerator
@Uloborus:
I don’t. I’m not even gonna list all the ways it has manifested itself since Nixon. I’m not interested in wasting my Saturday night recapping all the racist-driven bullshit the GOP has tossed out there in the past 40 years but suffice to say I think there is a damn good reason why practically all African-americans don’t support that particular party.
BDeevDad
I find it ironic that it is also Parkinson’s awareness month considering all the ignorance and hate that has been spewed towards PD patients by the right, particularly Rush vs Michael J Fox and the recent Tea Party protest.
Dennis G.
@Mike S:
That is just more proof of how the Republican Party has been completely captured by the Confederacy. It is only a matter of time before they start openly calling for a repeal of the 14th and 15th Amendments.
kay
@madmommy:
There’s plenty of racism in the north. PLENTY.
It isn’t the bigotry that bothers me with the Virginia thing. It’s the lying. It’s composing that statement to pander to a particular group, and posting it on a website in a deliberately low-key manner, and then defending the omission of slavery, and then finally apologizing, but only when it came to national attention.
What normally intelligent person writes a statement that OMITS slavery?
I don’t believe anything the governor says about any of this. He wrote it, or approved it. The only question is WHY he wrote it, or approved it.
Remember when Bush used to speak in that bizarre buzz-word code that was directed at fundamentalist religious? Remember how alienating that was to those of us who are not religious?
That’s what this is like. I don’t know the conservative code on the confederacy. Just come out and say it, for God’s sake, is what I want to tell the governor. Stop playing these stupid divisive games. Stop playing us for fools.
Dennis G.
@iriedc:
No copyright yet, but if you act quickly I’ll bet you can get it.
Uloborus
I think it’s obvious why flag lovers would fly both flags. Well, it fits into my theory, anyway. It’s all about ‘Us vs. Them’. America is ‘us’. The South is ‘us’. The Confederacy is The South, therefor it is ‘us’. They will zealously defend both, and they’re not interested in thinking about it. And really, all they have to do is blame the war on the North. You know, not America. No, THEY’RE America. It’s The North that was the aggressor, and they’re less American than us.
eastriver
So you lived in Georgia for decades, Denny. But you finish every posting and comment with “Cheers”.
What gives?
Are you drinking a beer every time you go online?
Are you actually toasting while posting?
Do you live in a pub?
Are you a Brit expat?
Are you being non-ironically ironic?
Or do you think it’s some kind of hipster sign-off like “stay groovy”.
Or is it a way to soften your harsh words with a vague sort of “just sayin'” button to let everyone think that maybe you’re just sort of kidding, don’t take it that seriously.
Stay groovy.
Urza
@justme: Cognitive Dissonance, a phrase not used nearly enough, nor even understood by all that use it. But it most certainly describes most of American culture these days. Holding 2 opposite ideas at the same time without any realization that they are opposite. Confederate and American flag. Warmongering follower of Jesus. Wondering why the brown people want to kill us while we send troops to accidentally kill their families or screw up their governments.
Most of it comes from lack of information of course, but even providing the information doesn’t necessarily remedy the problem as we all know. Certain memes are built with the intention of preventing it ever being dislodged by new info, thereby allowing it to live on forever in society.
arguingwithsignposts
I grew up in Texas and spent several years in the southeast. My ancestors were foot soldiers in the confederate army.
There are good people in those places. But I also lived five miles from a confederate memorabilia store that expanded every year (mid-2000s). I don’t take kindly to those folks lecturing me on love of country.
binzinerator
@kay:
C’mon kay. He’s not gonna say “There’s a usurping Kenyan nigger in the White House, and I understand your pain and commiserate with y’all.”
Not in public anyway. Not yet.
iriedc
@eastriver
Maybe it’s the company I keep, but quite a few of my friends and colleagues regularly sign-off with “cheers.” I thought they were just being polite.
Peace.
arguingwithsignposts
@eastriver:
Weak troll is weak.
Dennis G.
@eastriver:
Years ago over at the GOS I started ending with ‘cheers’ as I often ended conversations that way at the time. I like the term. It is an end point.
I’m glad to see that it gives you so many question.
And that reminds me that it is time to go for a pint.
Cheers
JoyousMN
That logo is brilliant.
justme
That’s the part that bugs me. I mean, if you’re going to have beliefs, one might think that understanding them would be a part of the deal. Apparently, this is not only not the case, but often becomes less likely the more ardent the belief. While I suppose I can objectively understand the appeal of that sort of blind, thought-free existence, it frankly creeps me out.
And sure, I see how they want to conflate the confederacy and America to try to absolve themselves, and vilify whomever they decide to be “unAmerican” or “not-them” this week, I don’t see why the rest of us put up with it.
kay
@binzinerator:
Very funny. Thanks. I don’t know how I can stay mad after that. I don’t have a real long attention span as it is…
So, this is, in your view, a “dog whistle”? I miss almost all of these deeply meaningful conservative rhetorical games. It took me several years to realize Bush was conducting some kind of wacko religious crusade, right under my nose. Is this a bona fide example, but directed at racists, rather than religious?
I suspected. I just didn’t know.
Annie
Really. Teabaggers, encouraged and supported by the Republican party, don’t have racist overtones? What do you think “Taking our Country Back” is all about? Have you seen the pictures at teabagger rallies? Looks pretty white to me.
It certainly isn’t about small government, when we know that most teabaggers receive government support…
madmommy
@Dennis G.:
Didn’t take it that way, just saw the possibility of that sort of comment and thought to throw my two cents out there ahead of time.
In no way do I think this idiot Governor’s idea is a good one. Adulation of the Confederacy is only dragging the south down. And we’re already dead last in damn near every important category. We don’t need the extra shove!
@BethanyAnne:
Thought about adding Molly, but she is a Texan, and they are a breed apart :)
Citizen_X
@eastriver: What the hell? “Cheers” is a perfectly legitimate way to sign off. I use it all the time, and I don’t use it to mean any of that shit you mentioned. Yeebus.
Joshua Norton
So every December the North should commemorate Sherman’s March to the Sea.
What? It’s just history. Lighten up.
eastriver
@Dennis G.:
Thanks.
Happy Days
Omnes Omnibus
@eastriver: Would “Best regards” have met with your approval? “Faithfully submitted” perhaps?
Citizen_X
@Urza: I keep threatening to make up a bumper sticker that says, “Behold the power of cognitive dissonance!”
It’ll never be inappropriate.
Wile E. Quixote
The Republican Party, the political party of racist traitors. I was thinking the other day that the baggers and birthers are the new Copperheads.
b-psycho
There is no such thing as a “Republican Party” anymore if you think about it.
eastriver
@arguingwithsignposts:
Witless is less witty.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
Insofar as the overt appeal to wistful dreams of the confederacy cements the Republican attachment to the South, I am fine with it. It regionalizes their base and helps isolate that party from reality. I think that works for us.
Insofar as this evil strain starts to infect large numbers of voters outside of the South, then we have a problem. There are pockets of this in the North, and West. However those of us who are sane mostly outnumber those idiots in the regions outside of the South.
What puzzles me is why we cower in fear of them and talk about them as if they have great power, when we should be kicking their sorry asses all over the playing field at every opportunity.
eemom
@b-psycho:
Dunno about that, but I do think the word “conservative” has lost all meaning.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@b-psycho:
Ideologically, yes, the thing we used to call the Republican Party is mostly a thing of the past.
But the noise machine and the money machine are still operating. And the grifters who want the attention and the money are …. grifting as we speak. Palin, Gingrich, Limbaugh, etc. These people make a living off this shit.
The elephant logo will stay alive as long as it has the power to attract microphones and/or donations.
eemom
To me as a (transplant) Virginian, there is one silver lining to this McDonnell bullshit this week, i.e., that it puts an end to the bigger bullshit of him being a so-called “moderate.” Now there’s a fucking fairy tale.
And again, I have to say it: FUCK YOU, everyone who didn’t vote last November. YOU are responsible for this, and for that worse fucking lunatic Cucinelli.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@Wile E. Quixote:
Excellent analogy.
binzinerator
@kay:
Yup. Some here are calling it tribalism, but a lot of what that tribe is about is defined by a certain view of black peoples’ place in their (white) society. As other commenters have noted in other threads on this Confederacy celebration stuff, the Confederte states’ articles of seccession were specifically about slavery and the negro’s proper place in their society.
Of course this is modern times, modern GOP, so ‘proper place’ applies to all non-white people (they will go batshit ballistic bonkers when immigration reform comes up.)
And I don’t think of it as dog whistle either. Nothing subtle about this. By declaring a month to celebrate the Confederacy this asshole is pandering to a particular kind of Southerner, and as someone noted in another thread, it’s a fuck-you to the president. It’s like having a Native American in the WH and some asshole gov. proposes a month of commemorating small pox blankets.
Mike Kay
@eemom: Why should I vote! Obama is worse than Bush!
/Firebagger-Teabagger Axis
Christine
I understand that the Confederate “rebels” would defend America, and they don’t necessarily think of themselves as traitors; but that is exactly what they are- they are espousing sentiments that go against the ideals of our country, and they are supporting a group that openly declared war on our country. These people don’t represent just the south either; you can see the flag waved at concerts and on trucks in Mo. and Ks. And I’m tired of them calling themselves ‘Real Americans’ I’m an American too, and I’m just as real as they are.
GregB
Michael Steele is the new GOP talisman.
He’s now the equivalent of:
Some of my friends are black.
A buddy of mine said he listened with awe today as a rightwinger told him how racism was dead. Except for the attacks on Michael Steele which were being perpetrated by Democrats who are a racist party.
Uloborus
@Annie:
I think ‘taking our country back’ is about anti-DEMOCRAT sentiment, not anti-black sentiment. I think that because they acted very, very similarly to Clinton. I mean, lord knows they’ve got the racist streak there. But they hate everyone who’s not them. If they didn’t care about the color of someone’s skin, they’d still be accusing Obama of breaking the constitution and yadda yadda yadda.
I’m not saying a lot of them aren’t racist. I’m saying that racism is the smaller part of their motivation, and the bigger part is that they hate that the other side won. And that’s the reason why they love the Confederacy.
Roket
It’s one thing to commemorate the past but it’s a whole other subject when you dig up the reason for the Civil War and prop it’s dead corpse up on a horse and parade it around town. I’m still trying to figure out why they miss the good ole days since they insist on partying like it’s 1949.
Joey Maloney
@34:
So every December the North should commemorate Sherman’s March to the Sea.
I’m beginning to think we should — by re-enacting it.
eemom
Michael Steele is proof of the existence of a just and Democratic God.
No matter how pathetic of a joke he gets to be — and he does, amazingly, keep getting pathetic-er — they are sooooo totally stuck with his “token” ass. Tee hee.
J. Michael Neal
@madmommy: Screw the south, and let them go. However, I firmly believe that an appropriate use of stimulus money is to provide a new house and moving expenses to any resident of the New Confederacy that wishes to emigrate. I’ll even throw in moving expenses to any resident of the Union that wants to leave.
FlipYrWhig
@Uloborus:
I agree. I think there are plenty with people with all kinds of racism, but the panicky tones this time around don’t _originate_ in racism. Take the health care bill. There are _still_ millions of people who think that the whole thing is a plot to let lazy negroes go to the doctor for free by raising the taxes of hardworking white people. But they’d think that even if it had been Bill Clinton’s plan or John Kerry’s plan. They think liberal elitists are bent on taking their stuff, giving it to crybabies and losers who demand special treatment, and telling them it’s for the best. Obama is just the latest version of the same old enemy, just less able to try to hide it.
I keep flashing back to a woman at one of the health care town halls who took the microphone and said, her voice shaking, “Why do we have to change?” That’s it. That’s the whole phenomenon. Whenever a Democrat gets into power, they get very worried that someone is going to force them to change because we don’t think much of them.
So I think the myth of the Confederacy works like this: the Confederates decided they would refuse to change and fight it out. The neo-Confederates and segregationists decided they would refuse to change and fight it out, and they borrowed Confederate regalia. The Dukes of Hazzard have a Confederate flag because they’re stickin’ it to the law and they’re not takin’ that shit.
That’s what the Confederate flag means to them. Some of it is about race. A lot more of it is about standing and fighting and refusing to do what high-and-mighty people think would be best for them. “Giving stuff to black people” is one of the cardinal liberal do-gooder deeds, and that’s where it intersects. My take, $.02 worth.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Make that fucker into a flag and I will buy one to burn on the fourth of July. :)
The south lost and we’ve been living with the sore losers down there ever since (this only applies to the sore losers and not the unfortunate souls that live among them). It’s crazy how these people can wrap themselves in the confederate flag, claim to be Patriotic Americans(R) and question the patriotism of everyone else in the country. This reaching back in time is disturbing because of the futility of it all and yet the old farts are buying it because they believe that ‘their times’ were far superior to the current one they find themselves in. It’s taking nostalgia into the political realm and trying to pretend that something like this could actually happen.
Stupid or dense don’t justify it, you have to be fucking brain dead to think in this manner.
The Republican party is populated by political snake oil salesmen who are poisoning the political climate by selling their ‘medicine’ to an ignorant public, all for personal gain and power.
Country first my ass.
Church Lady
@MikeJ: No doubt your neighbors cheered as the moving van pulled away.
J. Michael Neal
@Uloborus: I *might* go so far as to say that explicit, direct racism isn’t that large a part of the current GOP. There are probably a lot of them that don’t dislike black people, per se. However, I think implicit racism is endemic. They may like black people just fine, but, in the aggregate, they can’t be bothered to expend any effort to understand what black people (or Hispanics, or . . .) think, or consider them when they talk about what We want.
Witness, for example, Bob McConnell. For all I know, he isn’t racist in any way in how he interacts with people around him. However, when he says that Southerners should celebrate their ancestors and heritage, it never occurs to him that black Virginians have ancestors and a heritage, too. When he says that slavery wasn’t a primary issue for most Virginians of the time, he fails to consider the concerns of the 35% of Virginians who were slaves.
Sorry, but that’s racist.
Brick Oven Bill
I just get tired of people using Abraham Lincoln, a good man, who died for his ideals. Mistermix teaches us:
“It is a bit ironic that the Party of Abraham Lincoln has been captured by the deadenders of the Confederacy—but it has.”
In contrast, Abraham Lincoln teaches us:
“I agree with Judge Douglas he [the negro] is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment.”
Modern Progressives, of course, use black people to amass power. This gives African descendants less dignity than their former slave-owners. There is dignity in work.
Never forget that it is the Democratic Party that ended Washington DC scholarships, to keep the inner city kids away from their own. The Republicans supported these scholarships, largely for religious reasons. This means that the Democrats are in the lead with respect with Race Realism.
J. Michael Neal
I think that it’s very telling that the Neo Confederates insist that they are just celebrating their heritage. When they say that, what I hear is that they think the only notable thing the region they are so proud of has ever done was to commit treason in defense of being allowed to own human beings. Honestly, they can’t come up with something else to celebrate? That’s all they got?
john casey
I blame Willis Carrier
Church Lady
I get so tired of people who don’t live in the South constantly shitting on it. No, we’re not all raving racists down here. I’m not saying that there are none, because there are. However, look around your own Northern, Mid-western and Western neighborhoods, cities and states and try to say with a straigt face there is absolutely no racism there. You can’t. It is not confined to any one region.
As I recall, the most violent reactions to integration by busing in the 70’s didn’t take place in the South. No, that honor, and the riots, are reserved for Boston.
Phoebe
My brother was a Republican almost-politician at one point, and one of the elders approached him with an offer to sponsor him for the Sons of the Confederacy [we live in a border state], and my brother sighed said he couldn’t, thanks, because “I’m an abolitionist”. The old guy laughed and said that was a shame, and said if my brother ever changed his mind, etc. At least there was no attempt to distance the Confederacy from slavery. I hate it when they do that.
handy
@Church Lady:
You still insisted on posting this after the point of the OP already been explained, clarified, and re-stated several times. And like a lot of other statements I’ve read of yours here, the “most violent reactions to integration” one comes off rather overstated, particularly in light of events like this.
Kyle
I get so tired of people who don’t live in the South constantly shitting on it.
I get so tired of people who live in the South constantly shitting on the rest of the country. Not to mention committing armed treason in defense of the ‘freedom’ to own human beings then bragging about what better ‘Murkans and Christians they are.
No, we’re not all raving racists down here. I’m not saying that there are none, because there are. However, look around your own Northern, Mid-western and Western neighborhoods, cities and states and try to say with a straigt face there is absolutely no racism there. You can’t.
I can’t. And I don’t. And no-one ever did. Nice straw man you built there.
As I recall, the most violent reactions to integration by busing in the 70’s didn’t take place in the South. No, that honor, and the riots, are reserved for Boston.
As I recall, the violent reaction to the federal government insisting on civil rights for nonwhite citizens was magnitudes greater than anything over busing, and happened in the South. Boston has its pockets of racists, but they don’t dominate Massachusetts to the point where they consistently send bigoted, proudly-ignorant, corporate-tool corrupt authoritarian assholes to represent them in Washington.
Ked
I’ve been an occasional fan of the local spoof troll, but that’s just a little much. Time to make BOB go away again, I fear.
Wile E. Quixote
@Church Lady:
No, not everyone in the south is a raving racist, lots of people down there are just dumb, white trash such as yourself who wonder what’s wrong with the damned coloreds and try to excuse the racist heritage of the South by saying stupid things like:
Well that’s because you’re not only a racist but also an ignorant, stupid, dishonest and lazy. Yeah, northern cities were hypocritical on the issue of busing, not just Boston, but also very liberal Seattle. But if you weren’t a lazy piece of dumb, white trash you might have read the Wikipedia article on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing_in_the_United_States which includes this little tidbit of information:
But hey, let’s go a little farther back than 1970. Tell me Church Lady, how many lynchings were there above the Mason-Dixon line? How many civil rights workers were killed in the north when they were trying to register black voters? How many northern states had their national guard units federalized and had federal troops sent in to enforce Brown v. Board of Education? How many northern governors ran on a platform of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever” and stood in a schoolhouse door to block the entry of black students? How many northern states had a “sovereignty commission” that was in reality a de facto secret police dedicated to the mission of harassing members of the civil rights movement? How many northern states used state funds to fund racist groups like the White Citizens Council? How many black churches were bombed or burned down in the north?
Why do people shit on the South? Well it’s because so many people who live there deserve to be shit on for being raving racists who glorify its racist past or are whining little bitches like you who are more aggrieved by those who condemning the raving racists than they are by the raving racists themselves. Despite what you might think the governor of Massachusetts is not issuing any proclamations glorifying Louise Day Hicks or saying that the struggle against desegregation in Boston was a noble cause, unlike the governor of Virginia, who is saying that the southern struggle to keep blacks enslaved was a noble cause.
patroclus
Well, this narrative is accurate in the large sense, but before LBJ, there was Rayburn, a Southern Democrat who: (1) passed the non-discriminatory provisions in the statutes governing railroads, which led to later significant court victories in public accommodations in interstate commerce; (2) passed the Securities Act, which protected investors on a non-discriminatory basis; (3) created the Fed and the FDIC, which are at least supposed to protect depositors on a non-discriminatory basis; (4) passed the non-discriminatory Motor Carrier Act regarding buses, which led to Boynton v. Virginia; (5) passed and later vastly expanded social security on a non-discriminatory basis; (6) passed labor laws regarding unions and wages and hours on a non-discriminatory basis; (7) passed the wartime FEPC appropriations, which required non-discriminatory treatment; (8) passed the Rural Electrification Act, which provided access to electricity on a non-discriminatory basis; (9) uh, passed the Selective Service Act, which, uh, equally discriminated against all citizens; (10) passed the D.C. Voting Rights Amendment; (11) with LBJ, passed the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which created the Civil Rights Commission and the Office of Civil Rights in the Justice Department and provided some voting rights protections; (12) with LBJ, passed the 1960 Civil Rights Bill, which protected federal judges and prohibited using interstate mail and wires to encourage non-compliance with federal laws; (13) packed the Rules Committee in the House to ultimately ensure consideration of civil rights bills; (14) protected Adam Clayton Powell’s chairmanship, from which vast Great Society legislation would ensure; (15) met with and befriended Martin Luther King (and other civil rights activists); (16) convinced LBJ that he could also be pro-civil rights; (17) vastly expanded and contitutionalized the Commerce Clause upon which later civil rights acts are based and much more…
Rayburn was the son of a then-illiterate non-slaveholding Confederate cavalryman who was at Chickamauga and other notable battles and ultimately surrendered with Joseph Johnston in North Carolina after Appomatox and wanted no part of war (or war rememberances) thereafter. A grunt. While his sympathies were obviously with the South, the Rayburns were glad that the Union was preserved. To Rayburn, Texas had been part of the Union since Appomatox.
So Rayburn, a Southern Democrat, was actually doing good stuff despite loudmouths like John Rankin or Bill Colmer or more genteel Southerners like Howard Smith, whose influence was eventually overcome. Your narrative is accurate, but it’s not like LBJ suddenly swooped down in the 60’s and accomplished an 11-th dimensional metaphysical paradigm shift in the Democratic party. Seeds had been planted, groundwork had been laid.
Wile E. Quixote
@patroclus:
Sure, and there’s also Harry S. Truman. But for every Rayburn, Truman or Johnson there was at least one Wallace, Faubus, Thurmond or Helms. And today we have Joe “You Lie” Wilson, Bob McConnell, George “Macaca” Allen, fine southerners all.
Also what the fuck does Rayburn have to do with this? Are any southern governors out there championing Sam Rayburn, LBJ or Harry Truman and saying that we should commemorate the work they did for civil rights, bring down segregation and bring the South into the 20th century? Is your post anything other than a pointless display of erudition?
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
All I’ll say is that I think political maturity is measured in the ability to NOT reflexively defend groups that one has a tribal allegiance to, and leave it at that.
Citizen Alan
No he wasn’t. Nixon controlled this ideology of hate masterfully, just as Reagan did. The two of them did achieve the largest and second largest reelection margins in U.S. history after all. I doubt either of them particularly cared how the Southern Strategy would damage the Republican Party years after they were dead. As Obama said, Reagan was a transformative president, and the transformations he imposed on this country were in large part a result of his appeals to Southern racism. If Nixon was less successful, it was because of Watergate rather than anything related to his own appeals to hate.
Citizen Alan
@Joshua Norton:
You laugh, but if Ohio ever decided to make Sherman’s Birthday a state holiday the way several Southern states celebrate Robert E. Lee Day, every Southern state would throw a hissy fit of unimaginable proportions.
bob h
Prof. Harris-Lacewell of Princeton made what I guess is a pretty obvious point on NPR Saturday-that the Virginia celebration of treason was a deliberate, aggressive attack on a black President at a time when the Federal government is under assault by Teabaggers and nullifiers.
xaneroxane
@binzinerator:
Here’s a link to the Declarations of Secession from Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas, compliments of the Yale Law School Avalon Project (and TNC, over in one of his comments threads): http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/csapage.asp
See just how “not about slavery” the whole thing was…
Cheers!
charlie
All of this nonsense about the honor of the Confederacy and the “War Between the States” is pathetic. The Civil War was all about keeping the ability to buy and sell people. Everything else is a lie, and the “South” is based on lies, and those who celebrate the Confederacy have swallowed the lies.
asiangrrlMN
@Wannabe Speechwriter: That response sums up perfectly why racism is still one of the major tenets of the Republican Party. Look, racism isn’t just, “I hate black people or yellow people or anyone who isn’t white.” Racism is evident in this statement: We have a black guy in charge. We can’t be racist. We picked Sarah Palin as the VP candidate. We can’t be sexist. But, implicit in these statements is that any black guy, any woman will do–that is the racist/sexist part of the thinking.
Racism is a huge part of the Republican Party. Some are calling it tribalism, but it’s not that. Teabaggers are not angry that their wealthier (supposedly white) counterparts are getting tax cuts and breaks and whatever. They decry socialism while many of them are on SS or SS disability or Medicare or whatnot–so, it’s us and them, but us and them is based on race.
Yes, they would have been up in arms if Clinton had passed healthcare. However, it’s the fact that there’s a black man in the White House that pushes them that much further over the edge.
TNC did a follow-up post on Confederacy Month. In his previous post, he had heralded the governor for backtracking, saying it was a small ray of hope (I disagree. I thought the governor was just covering his ass, but that’s not the salient point). In this post, he printed a few responses he got.
Here’s the thing. Yes, there is racism in the north. Yes, the north did shit, too. However, if a southerner cannot say that slavery was the main reason for the Civil War, then I have no reason to talk to that person. If Confederate History is going to be celebrated, then it needs to be celebrated, as it were, accurately. No Texas re-write, thank you very much.
I learned more about the Civil War from the comments in that thread than I did in high school, sad to say.
asiangrrlMN
Fuck You, Word Press, and fuck me for forgetting the sockulist word.
@Wannabe Speechwriter: That response sums up perfectly why racism is still one of the major tenets of the Republican Party. Look, racism isn’t just, “I hate black people or yellow people or anyone who isn’t white.” Racism is evident in this statement: We have a black guy in charge. We can’t be racist. We picked Sarah Palin as the VP candidate. We can’t be sexist. But, implicit in these statements is that any black guy, any woman will do—that is the racist/sexist part of the thinking.
Racism is a huge part of the Republican Party. Some are calling it tribalism, but it’s not that. Teabaggers are not angry that their wealthier (supposedly white) counterparts are getting tax cuts and breaks and whatever. They decry sockulism while many of them are on SS or SS disability or Medicare or whatnot—so, it’s us and them, but us and them is based on race.
Yes, they would have been up in arms if Clinton had passed healthcare. However, it’s the fact that there’s a black man in the White House that pushes them that much further over the edge.
TNC did a third post on Confederacy Month. In his previous post, he had heralded the governor for backtracking, saying it was a small ray of hope (I disagree. I thought the governor was just covering his ass, but that’s not the salient point). In this post, he printed a few responses he got.
Here’s the thing. Yes, there is racism in the north. Yes, the north did shit, too. However, if a southerner cannot say that slavery was the main reason for the Civil War, then I have no reason to talk to that person. If Confederate History is going to be celebrated, then it needs to be celebrated, as it were, accurately. No Texas re-write, thank you very much.
I learned more about the Civil War from the comments in that thread than I did in high school, sad to say.
DPirate
You all make far too much of this. I think it would be good to have Confederate History month. There was more to the war of secession than slavery, and I’d say slavery factored in mainly as it applied to economics. There was just as much racism in the north as the south, if far less overtly brutal. Should we deny the fourth of july since the major players then were all slave holders? Or, say, roman history month, or get rid of columbus day and presidents day and washington’s birthday. Are you burning your money as it has pictures of slave holders on it? What about that asshole Lincoln who wanted to send them all back to africa and who ordered worse abuses of the constitution than Bush? Do you want to piss on the graves of every confederate soldier who right or wrong fought for his country (yes, his country, be it a carolina or georgia or whatever – this was a republic still back then [until the north won, at any rate]). I swear, when it comes to politically-correct, liberals are the mirror image of teabaggers.
Keith G
Three observations from a confirmed Yankee* who has spent 3 decades in the South.
First, Dixie-ism is mostly a rural phenomenon down here. The big cities of the South care about commerce, so green is the most important color. However, during Reconstruction, most southern states, like Texas, drew up constitutions that gave inordinate power to the agg/rural areas. Our Gov Rick Perry grew up in a cotton farming county that has a population density of 8 humans per sq mi. That’s got to leave a mark.
Second, There are Confederate-philes who are not racist, but are the type of person who gets chills studying martial cultures eg Rome, the Third Reich, the anti-bellum South. They may possess extreme cognitive dissonances, but there they are.
Third, the South has been under invasion for three decades and they are losing, slowly. I was part of the vanguard from the north. The biggest force, however, is from the southern borders and it is relentless. Even if the flow is slowed, the beach head is established and demographic change is in charge.
Crackers who used to disbarage and cringe at Black dialect are now walking into businesses where Spanish is freely spoken. So yes, the good ol boys are feeling a bit touchy.
*When pressed, I freely admit that my side won and not only has the Confederacy risen again, but it is being beaten again.
DPirate
@asiangrrlMN: Not so. Do you suppose any of them would vote for Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi? Whatever we may think of Sarah Palin, she touched base with them and they love her for it.
Even if true, it’s the pot calling the kettle black. Who the hell was Obama but a successful black senator before the election? There was nothing to mark him out as a presidential candidate over the likes of Dodd or Biden or Hillary. I submit the reason most voted for him was precisely because he is black. But wait, actually he is NOT black. He is mulato. The very fact that we label him black does speak to your argument.
Racism and sexism are american culture, like it or not. The people that frequent this site are as much affected by it as anyone else, though it isnt so easily recognized, being turned upon its head. It is the racism and sexism of equal opportunity, frankly.
kay
@DPirate:
Well, sure, but the agrarian economy was based on free labor, and then you’re right back at slavery.
I’m sorry southerners are feeling so put-upon, but it’s important to tell the truth. The whole agricultural midwest is based on federal subsidies. They’d grind to a halt without regular government market manipulation and fresh injections of massive federal funding, despite the agrarian fairy tale they like to tell themselves, and the myth they’ve sold the rest of the country. I don’t have any problem with anyone pointing that out.
Keith G
@DPirate: I would not disagree with a Confederate history month per se, but definitely not with your brand of logic as a guide. Slavery was the most significant issue. Period. You cannot wish that away.
Lincoln was not perfect, but he was willing to learn and grow, and he responded well to the mandate of realism. So put that straw man aside.
The South was not willing to learn, to grow, to submit to the mandates of a changing world. There were leaders who saw the moral stupidity of their actions and they, like Sam Houston, were drummed out of office. Note: He had a son who died fighting in a rebel uniform. Still ‘ol Sam did not support the Southern cause.
Toast
I’m thinking of putting this bumper sticker on Cafe Press…
Honus
@eastriver: we’ve had a bumper sticker down here for about 40 years that says “University of Virginia. Cheers” with a champagne glass on it. So leave Dennis alone.
Annie
@DPirate:
As a strong economic determinist, I would argue that most wars and forms of oppression have strong economic components. Even Nazi Germany, but I don’t really want to celebrate and recognize the contributions of Nazis through Nazi History Month…Understanding the past is one thing…Celebrating is another…Wearing pictures of and carrying Conferate flags, like Nazi symbols, are not recognizing and studying — it’s celebrating. Confederates lost…
Honus
@Brick Oven Bill:
“Modern Progressives, of course, use black people to amass power. This gives African descendants less dignity than their former slave-owners. There is dignity in work.”
Good point, Brick. Pandering for the black vote is less dignified than slavery.
eastriver
@Honus:
Why leave Denny alone? He’s a big boy. He can handle it.
And my questions were sincere-ish. (Besides, can’t I also post dumb questions that generate comment churn?)
eastriver
Happy Days
Dennis G.
@patroclus:
You are correct that history did not start with LBJ. Since before the Civil War there has always been Southerners of courage who fought to do the right thing on issue after issue. But for most Southerners between 1861 and 1971 it was slow transition to accept Civil Rights and many are still not there (and they are the base of the current GOP).
The era of Reconstruction has been lost in Southern history, but it is an important era to study. For decades after the Civil War poor white workers, immigrants and African Americans were learning how to work together and started to rack up a number of victories. It took a combination of strong anti-union laws, whites only primaries, State sponsored domestic terrorism and political cowards in Washington to end Reconstruction.
By 1890 the Confederates were in control of the South once again and as they rewrote history the myth of the honorable Confederacy took hold and swept out and hid from view the progress of Reconstruction. Birth of a Nation spread the myth nationally with an able assist from racist politicians like Tom Watson and Woodrow Wilson.
By the 1920s the KKK was marching through DC. A return to this era in what the Teabagger Republican Confederate Party is all about.
Cheers
Annie
@Brick Oven Bill:
The scholarship program is a temporary and extremely limited solution to issues with DC schools. Many educators — me included — believe that our focus should be on creating and sustaining quality neighborhood-based schools, where all children have access to quality education, and those living in the community — parents, business, etc — can contribute. Not supporting a program that benefits a small group that wins a lottery — talk about doing nothing for school and community-based renewal and growth.
Republicans don’t care about quality education or the small group of lucky students. They want vouchers to use public funds to pay for private, religious schools. Well isn’t that an irony — the party of small government wants the government to pay for their private schools…
Toast
The whole thing with the south and their attachment to the confederacy is just fucking tiresome. It’s like you’re married, and you and your spouse have the biggest knock-down, drag-out argument ever, and you’re right, so you win, but even so they just won’t shut up about it. For 150 FUCKING YEARS.
Honus
@Wile E. Quixote:Only one of these guys is a southerner. Joe Wilson is from Charleston, SC. George Allen is from California and McDonnell was born in Philly. They did seem to migrate here because they like the Confederate ethos that most of us relatively intelligent native southerners rejected when we reached puberty.
In particular, I hate george allen for moving to Virginia and building his political career by stoking the worst instincts of my peers.
Dennis G.
@Citizen Alan:
I stand corrected.
Your point that both Nixon and Reagan were able to surf this racist tide to electoral victories is a good one. The loss of control was for the Republican Party. I think Nixon believed that his Party would always be able to extract votes from these racists without ever having to give up operational control of the Party. It is here that I think he was wrong in the long term. But in the short term, Nixon, Reagan and many others have road this wave of hate to victory. And that is the only game plan the Republican Confederate Party has for 2010 and beyond.
Cheers
Honus
@eastriver: Point taken, East. I just felt that you were accusing Dennis of affecting Anglophilia, which to me approaches blood libel.
Honus
@DPirate: Don’t you have to get dressed for the reenactment soon?
BC
@Annie: Well, look at the response of the Confederate States after JFK was elected and it was obvious the federal government would enforce Brown v Board of Education : they essentially closed all the white schools and left the black schools as the only public schools, then opened Christian academies for the white students and tried to use public funds to pay for them. This has been the motive behind the entire voucher movement – it’s not to given any student a better education, it’s to be able to re-segregate via private schools and have the taxpayer frank it. They essentially destroyed the public education system from circa 1964 to 1990s (maybe even today, I don’t know), and have paid the price by having a less educated populace.
Phoebe
The South is never “gonna rise again” until it admits it was wrong. The End.
El Cid
@kay:
Only some Southerners feel put upon. Those white Southerners who lack Confederate / Redemption / Jim Crow / Segregation nostalgia usually don’t, unless things are too simplistically and broadly stated. Black Southerners — the majority of our nation’s African Americans live in the South — and Latino and Asian and most Jewish and formerly Northern Southerners don’t.
Turns out you really have to narrow down to just a few groups who think they exclusively count as “Southerners” before you get to Confederate nostalgia and slavery softening.
Bulworth
@Joshua Norton: True. dat.
Craig
The Union forever–Hurrah, boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitor, and up with the star!
While we rally ’round the flag, boys, rally once again
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ccQ6cT-9kk
Hart Williams
Rally ’round the flag, boys.
Meantime, the linkage between the “tea party,” the neoconfederates and the libertarians begins to seem more than mere coincidence. And how come in all this debate on “slavery v. tariff” nobody bothered taking a look into the purge of the Sons of Confederate Veterans by forces allied with a guy who’s stated “Appomattox was just halftime”?
Our comatose media continues to amaze tree sloths with their torpid lack of vigor.
http://wp.me/p5dEo-1Ze
kay
@El Cid:
I watched the CNN anchor interview two confederacy promoters yesterday. A husband and wife. They were dressed in period costumes. I felt as if the wife was persuaded by the end of the interview that this whole cause was perhaps sort of silly. She was doing a lot of apologizing. She got all wobbly under questioning.
She’s just in it for the weekend activity, and maybe the costume? Like a hobby.
Viva BrisVegas
@charlie:
Not exactly. The ability to buy and sell black people in the southern states was guaranteed and was not under threat. In fact slave ownership rights had been successfully shown to override the rights of non-slave states.
The actual question was over whether new states were to join the Union as free or slave. The Confederacy fought for the right to establish new slave states.
Their fear was that as new free states would join the Union without balancing slave states, the makeup of the Senate would naturally change over time and the South would eventually lose its stranglehold over Congress and hence the Supreme Court.
It would also mean that the South would lose its disproportionate influence over other policy areas like tariffs, trade and foreign policy (such as Cuba) which were deeply resented in the North. Of course, such policy differences ultimately derived from the differences between the slave and free economies anyway.
The Civil War was essentially a recognition by the South that with the election of Lincoln they had lost control of Washington. Without which their domination of the nation was untenable in the long term, so they decided to create a new union in which their interests could not be challenged.
Had they done so without the resort to arms, they might have gotten away with it.
So the origin of Secession was indeed the question of slavery, just not in the slave states.
The origin of the Civil War lies in the South’s faith in a military rather than political solution to the problem of Secession.
jrosen
From Steve Benen: A direct quote from John Fleming (R-LA)
“As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I work daily to ensure our men and women have the resources they need to protect this country, and I continue to be dismayed by the national security policies coming out of this White House. Simply put, President Obama is disadvantaging the United States one step at a time and undermining this country’s national defense on purpose. Whether he is catering to the anti-war leftists or truly doing what he thinks is best for our security, the president is leading this nation down a very dangerous path. [emphasis in the original]
As Steve points out, this is accusing the President of treason. Can we let this pass unremarked?
kay
In any event, the governor of Virginia is a paternalistic controlling, sanctimonious asshole, who ran as a moderate and isn’t.
That’s what he’s demanding to restore voting rights to non-violent felons. They have to persuade him that they are now “contributing members” of society, although they did their time, and no other voter has to prove anything to the governor to have access to the franchise.
His childish impractical staffer insists that people who cannot compose an essay that meets the governor’s standards can have “a lawyer” draft one for them, so that’s helpful. It’s nice she’s on the payroll to offer these ridiculous “solutions” to address a brand-new problem the governor created.
It’s disgusting and sleazy, and it’s another back-door cowardly way to impose hard Right dogma by disenfranchising people without admitting it.
He’s dishonest, and he misled voters as to his intent.
henqiguai
@DPirate (#80):
So tiring, yet it’s a burden I must shoulder…
No, dammit, he is, by definition, “black”. By all that is holy, legal, and customary in these United States, a person who is 50% negroid is BLACK. Get the f#ck over it.
Craig
@Citizen Alan: If Ohio ever decided to make Sherman’s Birthday a state holiday the way several Southern states celebrate Robert E. Lee Day, every Southern state would throw a hissy fit of unimaginable proportions.
Guerrilla parties are becoming very formidable. I know of no way to exterminate them except to burn out the whole country.
— Philip Sheridan, Civil War general
Southerners are in general, more ignorant, tribalistic, and violent than other Americans. Southern men are much more likely to get in a fistfight or worse in order to defend their personal honor. These same traits can be found in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps this explains the Southern male’s attraction to such places.
Lurking Canadian
One more piece of evidence (as if I needed any more) that President Obama is a bigger man than I am is that following the declaration of Confederate Pride Month (or whatever), he did not immediately declare April “Thank God We Crushed The Slaver’s Rebellion” month.
dj spellchecka
@ #80
actually most people voted for obama because he was a] not bush, b] the better candidate, c] a democrat. people tend to forget that he lost the white vote badly, 57-43 [white men 60-40]..in most of the south, he either did no better than kerry with whites, or worse.. in the states he flipped from bush, minority voters were the difference in [at least] nv, nm, fla, and nc. the state with the biggest white movement to obama was indiana, hardly a hotbed of liberal guilt…
binzinerator
@DPirate:
Then you go ahead tell us what it was.
I’d like to hear it because the seceeding states’ own explanations are still available to us — see xaneroxane’s link at #74. For fuck’s sake dude the word “slavery” is mentioned in the first or second sentence of each state’s declaration.
I think “more to secession than slavery” == “y’all wouldn’t understand, it’s a Southern thing”. I’ve heard Southerns say both, and both are used to avoid facing unpleasant truths.
Wile E. Quixote
@dpirate
Actually that’s spelled “mulatto”. Jesus, what the fuck is it with racist morons and their inability to spell? Or at least to turn on spell check in their browsers. And what the fuck is this “mulatto” bullshit? You sound just like BoB.
Oh, and as far as why people voted for Obama, yeah, it must be because we’re all a bunch of guilty white liberals and he’s black, or mulatto, or whatever, and not because the guy he was running against is a dishonest, irritable old crank with a boatload of health problems who picked one of the least qualified people in the world to step in for him in case he buys the farm and was running on the ticket of a political party that had spent the last eight years fucking up America and going increasingly insane while doing so. Wow, thanks. I now realize that the abject terror I felt every time I pondered the idea of Sarah Palin having the power to launch a nuclear strike was nothing more than a manifestation of my guilty white liberalism.
And of course the reason why Clarence Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court was because he was so supremely qualified. And the only reason why Harriet Miers didn’t get appointed was because liberals like Tom Coburn, Sam Brownback, Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter are a bunch of sexists who didn’t want a white woman on the court so they smeared her qualifications and got Sam “I’ve got ‘property of Antonin Scalia’ tattooed on the back of my neck” Alito nominated instead. And of course Michael Steele is obviously the most qualified person in America to lead the Republican party. Why with his brilliant leadership we won’t have to even wait for the 2010 midterms because the American people will be so inspired by him that they’ll rise up en masse and kick the Democrats out, repeal the 22nd Amendment and nominate Zombie Reagan/Sarah Palin as the new “President 4-evah” and then change our country’s name to “The United States of Jesus”. Wow, I totally get it now.
Wow, word salad. Well here’s the deal, if racism and sexism are American culture I don’t like it and don’t see why we can’t improve it and shouldn’t work to do so. The fact that we’ll never be perfect doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t work hard to be better. And just what the fuck does the “racism and sexism of equal opportunity” mean? Jesus H. Titty Fucking Christ, that’s an Orwellian phrase if I ever heard one. Let’s see, the idea behind equal opportunity is that we treat people the same regardless of the color of their skin or what they’re packing between their legs, so exactly how is that “racist” or “sexist”. Do you know what any of these words mean? Are you really BoB in disguise? Are you still having those hallucinations where toothless lesbians are chasing you around a darkened warehouse with forklifts?
Wile E. Quixote
@binzinerator:
How long before we see people wearing T-shirts with a Confederate flag on them that say “It’s a white thing. Y’all wouldn’t understand”?
binzinerator
@xaneroxane:
I lived in Georgia for a number of years. I know what it’s about, it’s damn obvious. Protestations of “more to it than slavery” and “y’all wouldn’t understand” are just refusals to acknowledge an ugly reality. They just lack the balls to face it, it’s much easier to construct other realities. This Confederate heritage celebration bullshit is just an example of doubling down on the lie.
People who are desperately seeking to find a way to tell themselves they are better than group X or Y are not going to admit to themselves their ancestors killed or sought to kill people in order to perpetuate a genocide. At worst their ancestors were despicable for doing this, worthy of shame and disgust only. At best they were dupes and ultimately victims themselves and their story is a damn sad and horrible tragedy.
But celebrate this? My ass. They’re just unable to face reality, and/or still racists.
binzinerator
@Wile E. Quixote:
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s not already in circulation. See, as we both know, that’s what they were really saying in the first place. Just substitute ‘Southern’ for ‘white’. ‘Cause they sure as hell weren’t referring to blacks when they say ‘Southerner’.
Northern Observer
@Wile E. Quixote:
Wile E Quixote,
1. I don’t post that often, I don’t know church lady’s history and I like a good smack down as much as the next intertubes user; but something to remember about the South is that it has always had large Liberal minorities in it fighting the good fight and sometimes wining. Don’t shit on these heroic people just because they can’t take the statehouse every November.
2. In terms of segregation horror stories, the South wins hands down. The power of the statehouse was used to provided massive resistance to the Civil Rights act. But Boston Chicago and LA were ugly. And as Rick Pearlstein makes clear in Nixonland, it was the shift of ethnic whites in the North to a more pro-Dixie position as civil rights in housing and schooling was implemented, that made Nixon and Reagan’s and ultimately Bush2s double term victories possible. Northern republicans have a lot to answer for and are the swing constituency in the long term battle for political supremacy in America.
Just saying.
As for people who want to write off the South, I say why be such timid pussies, you should take up an attitude of reconquista with an aim of knocking these states into the blue corner forever. Virginia and North Carolina and Florida are the current hopefuls, but Texas is the game changer and I look forward to the day that Texas can be counted on to go blue as much as California can – and it’s a coming mofo. Reconquista baby, Reconquista. A second Reconstruction if you will. Heh Heh.
Wile E. Quixote
I’m fully aware of this. After reading “Before the Storm” I came away with a huge admiration for LBJ. LBJ didn’t have to push for civil rights the way he did, he could have, after Kennedy was killed, told Martin Luther King “Look, the time isn’t right for this”. But he didn’t, in fact he took the exact opposite tack, called King and said “I’m going to try to be all of your hopes” and then busted his ass to get the Civil Rights act of 1964 passed.
Then there’s this, also from Before the Storm.
Johnson didn’t have to do what he did for civil rights. He could have let the issue slide until after the 1964 election, but he didn’t, he faced it head on and didn’t back down. The bitter irony of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency that is revealed by Nixonland is that it wasn’t civil rights that caused him to not run in 1968. It was Vietnam. If Johnson had pulled the troops out of Vietnam. If he hadn’t pushed for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution no one would have cared after 1964 except for the John Birchers. It wasn’t civil rights, or the Great Society that destroyed LBJ, it was Vietnam. It was listening to the conservatives in his administration that fucked everything up, not the liberals.
Original Lee
@FlipYrWhig: Amen. That whole post is worth at least a dollar.