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AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

 
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Thu 17 Mar, 2011 10:05 pm
@plainoldme,
No need. This is from the FreeRepublic.
Quote:
Was Dwight D. Eisenhower a liberal
Blue Works Better ^ | By MannyGoldstein at Sun

Posted on Friday, February 08, 2008 7:15:11 AM by meandog

I am constantly amazed (and annoyed) when the Right claims that the US has been hijacked by the Left over the past few decades. This is utter nonsense - the actual evidence indicates that we've moved far, far to the Right.

Consider the case of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States (1953-1961), Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, and a Republican. Funny thing is, by today's standards, Ike would be a flaming liberal, to the Left of all recent serious contenders for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Ike on Taxes First, a quick definition of earned income vs. capital gains.

Earned income is income made from a job.

Capital gains, in contrast, is money made from the appreciation in value of something one owns (assets such as stocks, property, art, ...), rather than money earned from a job.

Average folks gets most of their income from their jobs, and thus the tax rate on earned income is most important to them. Rich people get most of their income from the appreciation of assets, and thus the tax rate on capital gains is more important to them.

Earned Income Tax: Ike's Time vs. Our Time

The highest tax bracket on earned income today is 35%. During Ike's administration, the highest tax bracket was 92% in 1953, and 91% thereafter [1]. Yes, taxes on the Rich were almost three times higher under the Republican Eisenhower compared to our current President, or compared to the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton!
plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Thu 17 Mar, 2011 10:07 pm
Obama and Eisenhower have something in common, beyond the fact that their surnames both begin with vowels. Golf.

Does a shared love of golf make both men Republicans? Does it make both men socialists? Does it make both men liberal? Does it make both men conservative? In okieville, perhaps, it does.

I don't know about you but what really worries me is that both men have surnames that begin with vowels. Can we really trust a president with a vowel in front of his last name? Only five presidents had surnames that began with vowels.

Consonant initial surnames are American! Vowels are for foreigners! That includes the two Adams and Chester A. Arthur!
0 Replies
 
plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Thu 17 Mar, 2011 10:09 pm
@cicerone imposter,
Thanks for the article.
0 Replies
 
plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 08:19 am
I want to turn this thread a bit, but, to remain on the subject of conservatives.

Several contributors continually ask why more Black Americans do not fall in line with the republican party. They have no idea how many Blacks feel about Black republicans.

This article, unfortunately, was written under a pseudonym. The writer's anger is apparent. I have copied this so that you can learn as much about him as I know.


Drinking From the White Fountain: Tea Party Candidate Herman Cain Turns His Back on the African-American Community
By Chauncey DeVega, AlterNet
Posted on March 17, 2011, Printed on March 18, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150288/

While stumping on the fundraising circuit in Nashua, New Hampshire last weekend, prospective Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain gave a speech right out of the black conservative playbook.

Cain spun a tale of his own childhood that was part Leave it to Beaver mated with a healthy dose of The Andy Griffith Show. He colorized these nostalgia-laden versions of Americana and whiteness -- lies wrapped around a fiction -- by adding an anecdote from his own experience as a young man encountering the evil that was Jim Crow America. In Cain's telling, he was denied admission to the University of Georgia based on his race,even though he ranked second in his high school class. Rather than show righteous anger and indignation at how his basic life chances were threatened by the (il)logic of white supremacy, Herman Cain "never lost faith in America" and oddly "found inspiration in the experience" as it reinforced the values his parents had instilled in him.

Cain's story jogged loose a memory from my own childhood. My grandmother, like Herman Cain's family, lived in the South during the height of Jim Crow segregation. As a black American of a different generation, I would often ask her about those years, and about our family's experiences from slavery to freedom. She was our family griot, passing down long-told vignettes of centuries past, as well as stories from the recent past about the civil rights movement (she was especially proud of how white men in our small town called my great uncle "sir" instead of "uncle" or "boy").

One theme she consistently returned to was that black folks are like everyone else: during our three centuries in the country some of us were heroic, others cowardly, some good, and some bad. But there was always a sense of linked fate and communal obligation. As black folks struggling to survive in a white supremacist society there was really no other option if we were to triumph and make American democracy whole. However, my grandmother always reminded me that while most honored the community that nurtured them and fought for our collective well-being, there were others whose minds had been poisoned by white racism. These sad souls were to be pitied, but also avoided.

In their roles as race pimps who deal from the bottom of the "race card" deck on behalf of the Republican party, Cain and many other popular black conservatives run from the history of communal struggle and obligation that is a mark of pride in the African-American community. Moreover, they recycle conservative fantasies of self-made men and women, the dime-novel Horatio Alger tale, and embrace the myth of meritocracy. The latter is doubly ironic for black conservatives given America's long history of economic, legal, social and political privileges that were -- and often still are -- the exclusive province of white people.

Just as Herman Cain did in his speech in New Hampshire, popular black conservatives perform their designated roles as mascots and apologists for white racism. They are "the good ones": black folks who do not complain or protest, who trust in white benevolence, and never rock the boat. Thus black conservatives fulfill a fantasy role for white conservatives who seek to minimize the role that centuries of discrimination, violent oppression and racism continue to play in contemporary American life.

For example, take this anecdote Cain told to Matt Lewis of the conservative Daily Caller Web site:

"We were at the bargain basement department store one day,” Cain told me recently, “and my mom was looking on the rack and we asked if we could go get some water. And mom specifically said, make sure you all drink out of the colored fountain. And then, typical young boys, we kind of went hmm, nobody’s looking." Cain continues, “My brother went first while I stayed on the lookout. Then he was on lookout while I sipped the white water."

I asked Cain what lesson he learned from this experience. “We looked at each other and said, the water tastes the same! What’s the big deal?"
Cain grabbed headlines in New Hampshire when he made a case for his presidential candidacy in racial terms. “There are some people who will say, ‘I’m not going to vote for another black guy because this one didn’t work out,’” Cain told his audience. “And my response is, well, what about those 43 white guys you put in there? How did they work out? Don’t condemn me because the first black one was bad.”

Cain's narrative, in which, like other conservatives, he is an island unto himself -- separate from social structures and institutions -- is exposed as a naked lie when his story is placed in context. Herman Cain's success rests on the shoulders of the many nameless people who struggled and marched so he could fully realize his freedom and citizenship. For example, Cain attended Purdue University at a time when student activists forced colleges and universities across the country to integrate. As the Tea Party GOP loves to point out, Cain enjoyed great success in corporate America because of his hard work and talent. But, he was also successful because of how black and brown folks (and their white allies), kicked down the doors of Wall Street and Main Street, as well as cracked the glass ceiling, so that people of color (and women) could enter and rise.

In response, Herman Cain and his brethren grin and shuffle for white conservatives by telling them that "black folks are on a Democratic plantation" or "liberals are slave-catchers of black people." When playing this role, black conservatives spit in the faces of the thousands (if not millions) of African Americans who struggled and died for the freedom and full citizenship of all people.

African Americans' disregard for black conservatives is not a rejection of the merits of principled, ideological diversity. Rather, it is a response to how many black conservatives denigrate the common sense and political sophistication of the African-American community in order to earn their bona fides with the Republican Party. A firm rejection of black conservatives is also a function of self-interest. Herman Cain is a frequent speaker at events hosted by Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded group at the forefront of a successful effort in North Carolina's Wake County to end the desegregation of public schools. The Tea Party GOP is awash in the toxic fumes of white racial resentment, xenophobia and the neo-secessionist states' rights movement. These are efforts that do not serve the common good, and are especially noxious to the political health of black and brown folk.

Some have asked why I call black conservatives such as Herman Cain the "garbage pail kids" of American politics. It is not because they lack political vision. Nor is it a suggestion that black conservatives belong on the refuse pile of American history. I use this phrase because black conservatives have embraced a party that (especially given its current love of know-nothing politics) is hostile to a community to which they should have some nominal sense of attachment and commitment. With their ideology rejected by the African-American community, black conservatives are now quislings who seek solace in the arms of those who may hold people of color in low regard, but reward them for their novelty--and loyalty.

This critique of Herman Cain is not "just" about race or long-running political differences in the black community. No, this conversation is also about the reality that black conservatives are the spearhead and smokescreen for a range of policies that are hostile to the interests of the working- and middle-classes, and which support the dismantlement of the social safety net in this country.

Consider the following rogues' gallery and their relationship to the contemporary Tea Party GOP. Justice Clarence Thomas plays the role of an ethically embattled black golem who sleeps through hearings and only offers comment in support of the most draconian and right-wing positions. Juan Williams plays the role of a teeth-baring attack dog that slams NPR for "racism" and "elitism," thus legitimating the right's efforts to defund any media outlets that offer a voice contrary to Fox News. Michael Steele plays the "anti-Obama" -- a buffoon who promised to bring the "fried chicken" and "potato salad" in order to win the black vote. And Herman Cain plays the race minstrel, a projection of white fantasies and a magic salve that tells conservatives racism is gone, and any attacks against the Tea Party GOP that dare to suggest otherwise are dirty pool.

Ultimately, for any candidate running under the Tea Party brand, expressing reverence for the "Founding Fathers" and a cartoonish version of the U.S. Constitution is mandatory -- and, in this, Herman Cain, speaking in New Hampshire, did not disappoint. In a manner typical of "original intent" constitutional fetishists, Cain dodged any criticism which points out the obvious fact that the Founding Fathers were slave-holding hypocrites, and the Constitution itself was a pro-slavery document. But, then again, in Herman Cain's world, race-segregated drinking fountains did no harm; it's all about the water. In the very white world of the Tea Party, that reassurance is, no doubt, most welcome.

Chauncey DeVega is editor and founder of the blog, We Are Respectable Negroes, which has been featured by the New York Times, the Utne Reader, and The Atlantic. Writing under a pseudonym, DeVega writes essays on race, popular culture, and politics that have appeared in various books, as well as on such sites as the Washington Post's The Root and Popmatters.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/150288/

[w2]
plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 08:23 am
@plainoldme,
The rhetorical style is angry. Just remember that the writer is angry at Cain.

And, as the style here is angry, I am impelled to suggest that if Cain, Steele and Thomas were better men, who could present their conservatism in a better light, then commentators like DeVega might be able to consider them without ire.
0 Replies
 
H2O MAN
 
  -2  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 08:32 am


The left is becoming increasingly angry, ignorant and hate filled.
Their behavior is irrational because they are the ones that put this assclown in office.
plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 09:07 am
@H2O MAN,
Google Know Nothing Party.
okie
 
  0  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 09:43 am
@cicerone imposter,
cicerone imposter wrote:

No need. This is from the FreeRepublic.
Quote:
Was Dwight D. Eisenhower a liberal
Blue Works Better ^ | By MannyGoldstein at Sun

cicerone imposter, I would recommend the thread that I started, on which I posted in its entirety the article written by Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Saturday Evening Post in 1964, titled: "Why I am a Republican," which dispels any notion that Eisenhower was a liberal by yesterday's standards or by today's standards. That is proven by Ike's own words, when he talks about conservative principles and the virtues of capitalism and American ingenuity in contrast with big government and liberalism advocated by the Democrats. Obviously, big government and liberalism are just as real if not moreso for Democrats today as they were 50 years ago.

http://able2know.org/topic/144183-1

I have recommended it many times already, but to reinforce the truth of Eisenhower's own words, I also recommend the information provided at the National Association of Black Republicans. There are a couple of buttons on that site that I would especially recommend, those being "Black GOP History" and "Black History Test."

http://www.nbra.info/

If folks like plainoldme would educate herself on these matters, she would become so much more informed and less bigoted toward conservatives, who actually were at the forefront of giving freedom to blacks. One of those conservatives was the great Dwight D. Eisenhower, that once federalized the Arkansas National Guard to insure access for blacks to integrated schools in Arkansas, despite the opposition of an ultra leftist socialist Democrat Governor by the name of Orval Faubus.

As can be found in pom's posts, some of the most bigoted and vicious attacks upon conservative blacks come from the ultra liberal wing of the Democratic Party, both white and black.
okie
 
  0  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 10:07 am
@okie,
Another bit of history that I just learned from a web search, Orval Faubus had good reason for being an ultra liberal, because his father, Sam Faubus, apparently was a pretty radical socialist. He founded one of Arkansas' few chapters of the Socialist Party of America. Also, it should be mentioned that Orval Faubus was considered a mentor by Bill Clinton.

All of this supports what I have said here about the Democrats trying to keep the blacks on their political plantation. As long as blacks do their political work and deliver their votes, they will be taken care of. Dare to leave their plantation, and you will suffer their indignation. That is why black conservatives are so viciously attacked by the Democrats.
0 Replies
 
plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 10:09 am
@okie,
okie, you have no right to tell others to educate themselves unless it as satire. We all know it is not: you have never demonstrated a sense of humor and you are told daily that you do not understand politics and you have no memory for history. Satire requires humor and intelligence.

My senior thesis in political science was on decision-making. People do not make decisions based on intellection but on emotions. That has been demonstrated over and over again. If any intellection is involved, it is in rationalizing the decision after the fact.

However, I am more informed than you. How do you think I am able to post so much material from other sources? My use of outside research is more extensive than yours. My sources are also more varied.


You recommend that we all go to the National Black Republican site and take their quizzes on Black History. Those will be biased quizzes. I am in the middle of teaching The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Unfortunately, my students include people who thought Bubonic Plague was science fiction and who never heard the phrase Commie and have no idea what a Communist was. It is a struggle to deal with that sort of information gap. You couldn't because you not only have no sense of history, you have no idea how to answer your own questions.

It has been pointed out several times that the only reason eisenhower sent out the National Guard was to avoid the censure of Europeans.

I am not vicious but I am often humorous. I am not bigoted because I have sufficient education in politics, history, science, psychology and philosophy to know how dangerous the American right is.

plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 10:15 am
@plainoldme,
Basic 'research' from Wiki:

Faubus' name became internationally known during the Little Rock Crisis of 1957, when he used the National Guard to stop African Americans from attending Little Rock Central High School as part of federally ordered racial desegregation. His strong stand on this issue may seem surprising considering Faubus' 1954 run for governor as a progressive candidate promising to increase spending on schools and roads. During the first few months of his administration, Faubus desegregated state buses and public transportation[citation needed] and began to investigate the possibility of introducing multi-racial schools.[citation needed]

In 1956, Faubus easily blocked a primary election challenge from State Senator James D. Johnson of Conway, the segregationist leader of conservatives. Johnson's wife, Virginia Morris Johnson, made campaign speeches for her husband and later became the first woman (1968) to seek the office of Arkansas governor.[5] By the start of 1957, Faubus in his second term had obtained legislative passage of a controversial tax to increase teacher salaries.

Critics have long charged that Faubus' fight in Little Rock against the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that separate schools were inherently unequal, was politically motivated. The ensuing battle helped to shield him from the political fallout from the tax increase, and to diminish Johnson's appeal. Journalist Harry Ashmore (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his columns on the subject) portrayed the fight over Central High as a crisis manufactured by Faubus. Ashmore said that Faubus used the Guard to keep blacks out of Central High School because he was frustrated by the success his political opponents were having in using segregationist rhetoric to arouse white voters.

Faubus' decision led to a showdown with President Dwight D. Eisenhower and former Governor Sid McMath. In October 1957 Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered them to return to their armories which effectively removed them from Faubus' control. Eisenhower then sent elements of the 101st Airborne Division to Arkansas to protect the black students and enforce the Federal court order. In retaliation, Faubus shut down Little Rock high schools for the 1958–1959 school year. This is often referred to as "The Lost Year" in Little Rock.[6]

Though Faubus later lost general popularity as a result of his stand against desegregation, at the time he was included among the "Ten Men in the World Most Admired by Americans", according to Gallup's most admired man and woman poll for 1958. This dichotomy was later summed up as follows: Faubus was both the "best loved" and "most hated" of Arkansas politicians of the second half of the twentieth century.
plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 10:15 am
@plainoldme,
Note the calls for citation.
okie
 
  0  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 10:17 am
@plainoldme,
plainoldme wrote:
It has been pointed out several times that the only reason eisenhower sent out the National Guard was to avoid the censure of Europeans.
Who made that up, pom? That is as far fetched as could possibly be. Good grief, Ike had just spent years during the war dealing with Europeans, some of which he had defeated with the invasion of Normandy and eventually ending up in the taking of Berlin, at great cost of life.
0 Replies
 
plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 10:20 am
@plainoldme,
Shining some more light on Faubus, also from Wiki:

Faubus was elected governor to six two-year terms and hence served for twelve years. He maintained a defiant, populist image while at the same time, he shifted toward a less confrontational stance with the federal government, particularly during the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, with each of whom he remained cordial, and both of whom carried Arkansas. . .


In 1962, Faubus [broke with] the White Citizens' Councils and other rightist groups, who preferred but did not officially endorse, U.S. Representative Dale Alford in that year's gubernatorial primary.[7] Faubus cast himself as a moderate, he completely ignored the race issue during the 1962 election campaign, and barely secured a majority over Alford, McMath, and three other candidates. He then handily defeated the Republican Willis Ricketts, a then 37-year-old pharmacist from Fayetteville in the general election.[8]
While he was still an outcast from black leaders, Faubus nevertheless won a large percent of the black vote. In 1964, when he easily defeated the Republican Winthrop Rockefeller, Faubus secured 81 percent of the black vote.

Faubus chose not to run for re-election to a seventh term in what would likely have been a difficult race in 1966. Former gubernatorial candidate Jim Johnson, by then an elected Arkansas Supreme Court justice, narrowly won the Democratic nomination over another justice, the moderate Frank Holt. Johnson was then defeated in the general election by Rockefeller, who became the state's first GOP governor since Reconstruction. Ironically, years later, Johnson himself became a Republican and supported Governor Frank D. White, later a benefactor of Faubus.[9]

In 1968, Faubus was among five people considered for the vice-presidential slot of third-party presidential candidate George Wallace. However, in light of the public perception of both as segregationists, Wallace ended up selecting retired General Curtis LeMay.

During the 1969 season, Faubus was hired by new owner Jess Odom to be general manager of his Li'l Abner theme park in the Ozark Mountains, Dogpatch USA. According to newspaper articles, Faubus was said to have commented that managing the park was similar to running state government because some of the same tricks applied to both.

Faubus sought the governorship again in 1970, 1974, and 1986 but was defeated in the Democratic primaries by Dale Bumpers, David Pryor, and Bill Clinton, respectively, each of whom went on to defeat Republican opponents. . .

Faubus' decline occurred when the Democrats reformed their own party in response to public acceptance of the progressive polices followed by Rockefeller. Thus, a new generation of popular Democratic candidates easily contrasted themselves favorably in voters' minds with Faubus' old-style politics and a more conservative Republican Party which followed Rockefeller's tenure in the state.[citation needed]
0 Replies
 
plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 10:23 am
In Faubus' own words, a 1957 interview conducted by Mike Wallace:

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/faubus_orval_t.html
0 Replies
 
H2O MAN
 
  -1  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 10:33 am
@plainoldme,
You are the Know Nothing Ignoranus
0 Replies
 
plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 10:42 am
I decided to look at okie's history test from the National Black Republican Association. It is a piece of propaganda.

Propaganda works best when it uses statements that are true but not accurate. Let me illustrate what I mean. A few years back, tea drinkers were surprised to learn that the Chinese did not wash their tea pots with soap and water. That is true, if one inserts the name of the province in which the pots are made from the clay found there and if one inserts the word "steeping" in front of tea pots. The statement is true but inaccurate.

The Black Republicans, in an effort to drive their propaganda home, tell you the answers before you begin the quiz!

The first question asserts the Republican party was "founded as an anti-slavery party." That is not true. The Republican Party became the anti-slavery party briefly but not all party members were anti-slavery adherents.

Hey, Susan B. Anthony supported and illegally voted for the Republicans who later trounced the ERA.
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 10:48 am
@okie,
Your ability to ignore facts is standard knowledge; you're a dupe! What contemporary conservative today would approve Ike's 92% tax rate? Can you name one?
okie
 
  1  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 10:59 am
@cicerone imposter,
cicerone imposter wrote:
What contemporary conservative today would approve Ike's 92% tax rate? Can you name one?
Yes, me. I proposed right here on this forum a zero percent tax up to 100 grand income and 100% marginal tax rate on any taxable income over 100 grand, but liberals like cylcops immediatedly opted out. My very sound reasoning was, that if we now accept the standard practice of "to each according to their need and to each according to their ability," why does anyone need more than 100 grand to live comfortably? My proposal is for people that are serious about solving the fiscal crisis in this country.
Cycloptichorn
 
  0  
Reply Fri 18 Mar, 2011 11:01 am
@okie,
okie wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:
What contemporary conservative today would approve Ike's 92% tax rate? Can you name one?
Yes, me. I proposed right here on this forum a zero percent tax up to 100 grand income and 100% marginal tax rate on any taxable income over 100 grand, but liberals like cylcops immediatedly opted out. My very sound reasoning was, that if we now accept the standard practice of "to each according to their need and to each according to their ability," why does anyone need more than 100 grand to live?


I have no intention of engaging in a useless discussion of an unworkable tax scheme, Okie. Waste of my time, and what more, I don't believe you when you say you would actually support such a thing.

Cycloptichorn
 

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