@coldjoint,
Quote:
“This form of ideological bigotry is unacceptable,” Salcedo says in a written statement. “The very idea that one’s ideology is formed by the color of one’s skin is dumb, offensive and is counter to the message of a REAL civil rights leader named Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King said, ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’”
Martin Luther King Jr. was despised by most conservatives during his lifetime. I ought to know. I was an observant teenager at the time. George Herbert Walker Bush, who then was representing the Congressional District that also included my affluent school district (which was full of spoiled rich kids), actually called King "an extremist." Few of my classmates were liberal. The majority were Republicans; and a fair number were supporters of George Wallace, the segregationist Governor of Alabama. I still remember the reaction of my high-school classmates to the assassination of Martin Luther King. Let's just say there was less joy expressed at the end of the school year.
As has been pointed out many times, the bitter truth is that almost the entire leadership of the conservative movement was in no way, shape, or form opposed to Jim Crow. They were actually sympathetic toward the white Southern segregationists. I certainly don't believe that all minority people should be liberal on every issue. That would be unreasonable. After all, many issues have nothing to do with race or ethnicity. But when I see a black man named Clarence Thomas sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court who votes to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act, I have to assume that he would have voted with the majority in the historically notorious
Plessy vs. Ferguson decision. In other words, Clarence Thomas is a traitor to his own race.
Instead of having the moral courage to face up to their pathetic record on civil rights during the 1950s through the 1970s, conservatives seek to rewrite history in such a boldly outrageous way that even Joseph Goebbels would blush.
No, coldjoint, I've not joined your opponents. I'm not your enemy, and never would be. I certainly don't want to discourage you. I'm just an online oddball. As I've said before, I'm just a disillusioned moderate, a centrist who views the course of political trends in this country as being beyond his control. I'm not optimistic about our country's future, but changing anyone's mind in these A2K forums is not going accomplish anything. As Setanta has said in another forum, our posts are not important. They give us the satisfaction of seeing our opinions displayed on a computer screen; but in the scheme of things, they usually count for nothing. A fact that took me several years to learn.
