@coldjoint,
Quote: The KKK was created by southern Democrats. It was also the Democrats who enacted strict voting registration laws that were specifically designed to prevent blacks from voting. It was the Republican Party that led the push to fight those laws and to pass the both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
Why do you keep denying the historical record of the political conservative movement on this issue?
As before, I must state my disclaimer
so false accusations won't be made against me: I voted for McCain in 2008 and did not vote in 2012. I'm a disillusioned centrist who has been alienated by both the Republicans and the Democrats, and also has no use for the Libertarians. A nonvoter. I'm pro-life, and I'm opposed to same-sex marriage. So, where does that leave me? Without a party, of course! I would have to violate my conscience in order to support either party. In other words, I don't have a dog in this fight. But I get tired of revisionist "history."
The Southern Democrats of the 19th century were conservatives. The Ku Klux Klan was a conservative movement from the very beginning. Can you name a single liberal stance that the KKK has endorsed?
Friends of the black freemen were found in the Republican Party for a time, but not all Republicans (such as President Andrew Johnson, formerly Vice-President under Lincoln) were their friends. The last friend that black Americans had in the White House was Ulysses Grant. When he was succeeded by the Republican Rutherford Hayes, black Americans were abandoned by the Republicans to the tender mercy of the conservative segregationists.
Black Americans did not have a friend in the White House until President Truman raised civil rights as an issue and, as a result, was nearly defeated in the 1948 presidential election by the defection of white Southern segregationists in the party led by none other than Strom Thurmond, who would join the Republican Party in 1964.
During the 1950s and the 1960s, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party had a left wing and a right wing. Today both parties are polarized. There is no right wing of the Democratic Party, and there is no left wing of the Republican Party.
For years the passage of civil rights legislation was prevented by a Congressional coalition of Southern conservative Democrats and northern conservative Republicans. Note the key word here:
CONSERVATIVE.
The conservative movement was opposed to civil rights from the very beginning. I ought to know. I lived through the period. The record is clear. Conservatives such as William F. Buckley Jr. were opposed to the landmark Supreme Court ruling
Brown v. Board of Education. Years ago I had the opportunity to read the very column in which he condemned the ruling. Conservatives had no sympathy for blacks who were discriminated against under Jim Crow. (I'm wondering. Has any white person ever been denied treatment for a snakebite on the basis of his race?) They only had sympathy for white racist bigots.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act (opposed by Republican Barry Goldwater in his 1964 presidential campaign) was loudly opposed by conservatives, as was the Voting Rights Act in the following year. To say that conservatives led the fight for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act is simply a baldfaced lie. (Last year the Voting Rights Act was eviscerated by the Supreme Court by guess whom? The Republican majority, of course!)
Look at the record of Ronald Reagan. He opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and he opposed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and opposed its renewal in 1970 and 1975. If I had hated blacks, I would have loved Reagan!
The Republican Senators who voted for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were not conservatives! They were moderates or liberals. They were not supporters of Barry Goldwater, and they were despised by the conservatives in their party! They were called Rockefeller Republicans. Today they would be called RINOs.
The white Southern segregationists began migrating to the Republican Party. They were recruited by guys like Lee Atwater and Pat Buchanan. Ever hear of the Southern strategy? Well, it's worked quite well!
Incidentally, one of the leading figures of The Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank) is Charles Murray, who believes that blacks are genetically inferior to whites. (He also believes that women are inherently inferior intellectually to men. I bet the jerk's a great husband! Pity his wife! My wife is smarter than he is.) I haven't noticed any signs of embarrassment from conservatives on his account. I'm not saying Jack Kemp never took issue with him, but I never heard that he did. (I almost forgot to mention this: Buckley was a defender of William Shockley, a staunch racist.)
I could go on and on, but I've said enough in the way of presenting proof of my assertion.
Coldjoint, you would do far better if you concentrated upon certain welfare policies that seem to have wrecked havoc on the black family. But you will get nowhere engaging in this sort of historical revisionism, which is nearly as odious as Holocaust denial. (Well, actually, you might. People will believe anything.)
There are individual Americans, white and black, who made great sacrifices for the cause of civil rights during the 1960s and the 1970s. Some lost their jobs; others, their lives. I get sick and tired of those who take credit for the bravery of others when they themselves either did absolutely nothing or, in fact, supported the other side!
Coldjoint, I'm sure you're a nice guy. We'd probably get along quite well in the admittedly unlikely event we ever met. My current best friend votes Republican. I have no problem with you being a political conservative ("To each his own"), but rewriting history is not right!
The father of a childhood friend of mine was a white Southerner who was a WW2 veteran. He became a civil rights attorney at a time when a great deal of courage was required to even publicly question the morality of Jim Crow. He and the members of his family received death threats. At least on one occasion, his children had to be escorted to school by the police. He was a "real man" who had more courage than I would ever have had in his situation. He was cut from the same cloth as great men such as Andrei Sakharov and Raoul Wallenberg. I do not know of a single white conservative who had that sort of a record. Many of the white conservatives I knew as I was growing up (classmates and/or their parents) were racist bigots. I grew up in the Congressional district that was represented by George Herbert Walker Bush from 1967 to 1971.
So, please stop with the historical revisionism already. Another name for it is the Big Lie technique.
I'm getting tired of writing the same thing over and over again. I'm dangerously close to giving up on Internet posting. It's just people arguing nonstop. Nothing's accomplished. There's no understanding. I'm now inclined to think it's all in vain.
A few of the liberals here are going to have to take up the slack here and oppose this historical revisionism. You really need to do it because today's lies become tomorrow's "gospel truth." I'm tired of doing it and may actually take a permanent vacation. At least from the political threads.
I'm done here.
End of rant.
