{"id":1521,"date":"2011-12-22T00:07:42","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T06:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=1521"},"modified":"2011-12-22T14:11:05","modified_gmt":"2011-12-22T20:11:05","slug":"poking-at-hornets-nests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=1521","title":{"rendered":"Poking at Hornets’ Nests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rev. Wayne Perryman, of Seattle, a recovering Democrat, has pursued lawsuits against the Democratic Party on three occasions, seeking to win an apology for centuries of oppression, murder, mayhem, and bigotry directed against blacks. \u00a0And although he and most of his fellow plaintiffs, and those who filed amicus<\/em> briefs, are black, the courts have consistently ruled that blacks of today were not harmed by Democratic racism and lack \u201cstanding.\u201d\u00a0 That has been the fate of Rev. Perryman\u2019s most recent effort, dismissed by the court in recent days.\u00a0 Nevertheless, in spite of the Court\u2019s refusal to hear the case, it is time once again to help set the record straight.<\/p>\n

In a Wall Street Journal<\/em> editorial titled Whitewash<\/em>, The racist history the Democratic Party wants you to forget, <\/em>conservative columnist Bruce Bartlett taught ultra liberal New York Times<\/em> columnist Paul Krugman a lesson that most small boys learn the hard way: when approaching an active hornets\u2019 nest, it\u2019s best not to poke at it with a stick\u2026 which is precisely what Krugman has done in his book, The Conscience of a Liberal.<\/em><\/p>\n

As if borrowing shamelessly from Barry Goldwater\u2019s \u201cThe Conscience of a Conservative,\u201d were not enough, Krugman proceeded to turn what was clearly intended to be a serious book into a comic piece by tagging it with a blatant oxymoron.\u00a0 As Bartlett explains, Krugman attempted to make the case that \u201cthe political success of the Republican Party and the conservative movement over the past 40 years has resulted largely from their co-optation of Southern racists that were the base of the Democratic Party until its embrace of civil rights in the 1960s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apparently Krugman has not ventured far from his ivory tower at the New York Times<\/em>.\u00a0 If he had, he would know a bit more about the remnants of the Democrat Party south of the Mason-Dixon Line.\u00a0 He would understand that, during the \u201860s, \u201870s, and \u201880s, southern Democrats with an ounce of gray matter, an ounce of human compassion, and more than an ounce of courage, switched to the Republican Party.\u00a0 Those who remained in the party occasionally wash and iron their white sheets and hoods and burn small crosses in their back yards\u2026 just to stay in practice.<\/p>\n

Bartlett tells us that a key piece of evidence for Krugman\u2019s mistaken notion is that, in Ronald Reagan\u2019s first speech after accepting the 1980 Republican nomination, he expressed his support for \u201cstates\u2019 rights.\u201d \u00a0To Krugman, and other liberals, this can only be code for a secret sympathy for southern racism.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever,\u201d Bartlett asks, \u201cif a single mention of states\u2019 rights 27 years ago is sufficient to damn the Republican Party for racism ever afterwards, what about the 200-year record of prominent Democrats who didn\u2019t bother with code words? \u00a0They were openly and explicitly pro-slavery before the Civil War, supported lynching and Jim Crow laws after the war, and regularly defended segregation and white supremacy throughout most of the 20th century.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bartlett then proceeds to offer some direct quotes from prominent Democrats: “I hold that a Negro is not and never ought to be a citizen of the United States. \u00a0I hold that this government was made on the white basis; made by the white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men and none others.\u201d \u2013 Sen<\/em>. Stephen A. Douglas (D.,\u00a0Ill.), 1858; Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, 1860.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI am opposed to the practice of having colored policemen in the District (of Columbia). \u00a0It is a source of danger by constantly engendering racial friction, and is offensive to thousands of Southern white people who make their homes here.\u201d\u2013 Sen. Hoke Smith (D.,\u00a0Ga.), 1912; Appointed Secretary of the Interior by Grover Cleveland, 1893.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cRepublicanism means Negro equality, while the Democratic Party means that the white man is supreme. \u00a0That is why we Southerners are all Democrats.\u201d \u2013 Sen. Ben Tillman (D.,\u00a0S.C.), 1906; Chairman, Naval Affairs Committee, 1913-19.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Negro as a race, in all the ages of the world, has never shown sustained power of self-development. \u00a0He is not endowed with the creative faculty\u2026\u00a0 He has never created for himself any civilization\u2026 \u00a0He has never had any civilization except that which has been inculcated by a superior race. \u00a0And it is a lamentable fact that his civilization lasts only so long as he is in the hands of the white man who inculcates it. \u00a0When left to himself he has universally gone back to the barbarism of the jungle.\u201d \u2013 Sen<\/em>. James Vardaman (D.,\u00a0Miss.), 1914; Chairman, Committee on Natural Resources, 1913-19.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI do not feel that it would be out of place to state to you here on this occasion that I know that without the support of the members of this organization I would not have been called, even by my enemies, the \u2018Junior Senator from Alabama.\u2019\u00a0\u201d \u2013 Hugo<\/em> Black, accepting a life membership in the Ku Klux Klan upon his election to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from Alabama, 1926;\u00a0 Appointed to the United States Supreme Court by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI have never seen very many white people who felt they were being imposed upon or being subjected to any second-class citizenship if they were directed to a waiting room or to any other public facility to wait or to eat with other white people. \u00a0Only the Negroes, of all the races which are in this land, publicly proclaim they are being mistreated, imposed upon, and declared second-class citizens because they must go to public facilities with members of their own race.\u201d \u2013 Sen. Richard B. Russell Jr. (D.,\u00a0Ga.), 1961.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI did not lie awake at night worrying about the problems of Negroes.\u201d \u2013 Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, 1961. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThese Negroes, they\u2019re getting pretty uppity these days and that\u2019s a problem for us since they\u2019ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness.\u00a0 Now we\u2019ve got to do something about this, we\u2019ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.\u00a0 For if we don\u2019t move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there\u2019ll be no way of stopping them, we\u2019ll lose the filibuster and there\u2019ll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. \u00a0It\u2019ll be Reconstruction all over again.\u201d \u2013 Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D.,\u00a0Texas), 1957; President of the United States, 1963-69.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no warrant for the curious notion that Christianity favors the involuntary commingling of the races in social institutions. \u00a0Although He knew both Jews and Samaritans and the relations existing between them, Christ did not advocate that courts or legislative bodies should compel them to mix socially against their will.\u201d \u2013 Sen. Sam Ervin (D.,\u00a0N.C.), 1955; Chairman, Senate Watergate Committee, 1973-74; Chairman, Committee on Government Operations, 1971-75.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI’m not going to use the federal government\u2019s authority deliberately to circumvent the natural inclination of people to live in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods\u2026 \u00a0I have nothing against a community that\u2019s made up of people who are Polish or Czechoslovakian or French-Canadian or blacks who are trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods.\u201d \u2013 Gov<\/em>. Jimmy Carter (D-GA), 1976; President of the United States, 1977-81.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody likes to go to Geneva. \u00a0I used to do it for the Law of the Sea conferences and you\u2019d find these potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they\u2019d just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva.\u201d \u2013 Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-SC), 1993; Chairman, Senate Commerce Committee, 1987-95 and 2001-03; Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 1984.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI am a former Kleagle [recruiter] of the Ku Klux Klan in Raleigh County\u2026\u00a0 The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia.\u00a0 It is necessary that the order be promoted immediately and in every state in the union.\u201d \u2013 Sen<\/em>. Robert C. Byrd, 1946; Democratic Senator from West Virginia, 1959-2010; Senate Majority Leader, 1977-80 and 1987-88; Senate President Pro Tempore, 1989-95, 2001-03, 2007-2010.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bonus quote: \u201cIt has of late become the custom of the men of the South to speak with entire candor of the settled and deliberate policy of suppressing the Negro vote. \u00a0They have been forced to choose between a policy of manifest injustice toward the blacks and the horrors of Negro rule. They chose to disfranchise the Negroes. \u00a0That was manifestly the lesser of two evils\u2026\u00a0 The Republican Party committed a great public crime when it gave the right of suffrage to the blacks\u2026\u00a0 So long as the Fifteenth Amendment stands, the menace of the rule of the blacks will impend, and the safeguards against it must be maintained.\u201d \u2013 Editorial, “The Political Future of the South,” New York Times, May\u00a010, 1900.<\/em><\/p>\n

Has Mr. Krugman\u2019s employer changed its editorial policy since 1900?\u00a0 As the citadel of bias and hypocrisy in journalism, the Times<\/em> has been unerringly consistent in its refusal to condemn the blatant racism of Democrats, whether in the 19th<\/sup>, 20th<\/sup>, or 21st<\/sup> century.\u00a0 That being the case, before attempting to ascribe improper and unprovable motivations to southern Republicans, Mr. Krugman might want to spend a few hours in the basement of the Times<\/em>, searching through the dusty archives to find a rare example of the Times\u2019<\/em> condemnation of Democratic racism. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rev. Wayne Perryman, of Seattle, a recovering Democrat, has pursued lawsuits against the Democratic Party on three occasions, seeking to win an apology for centuries of oppression, murder, mayhem, and bigotry directed against blacks. \u00a0And although he and most of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1521"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1525,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521\/revisions\/1525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}