The Role of Racism in the Rise of the Radical Conservative Movement: 1961-2004

[Time for change]

The takeover of the Republican Party by radical conservatives and the consequent dismantling of FDR’s New Deal hit full stride in 1980 with Ronald Reagan's presidential election victory. But the roots for those tragedies were laid in the 1960s with the events like the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That legislation represented the greatest steps in making American citizenship a reality for the descendents of African slaves since the passage of our 13th through 15th Amendments to our Constitution (1865-70), which forbade slavery and, in theory at least, provided civil rights and voting rights for African-Americans.

That landmark legislation was initiated by President Kennedy, and then pushed through Congress by President Johnson following Kennedy’s assassination. Kennedy brought the case to the American people in a speech just four months prior to his death:

The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day; one third as much chance of completing college; one third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year; a life expectancy which is seven years shorter; and the prospects of earning only half as much.

In his new book, “The Conscience of a Liberal” Paul Krugman describes:
 How “movement conservatism” took over the Republican Party with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980
 How that movement has resulted in the greatest levels of inequality in our country seen since the Gilded Age
 Why inequality is bad for our country
 Why the GOP has continued to win elections despite an agenda that works against the interests of the vast majority of Americans
 What we should do about it

Movement conservatism is basically a movement to dismantle FDR’s New Deal, a large body of legislation that brought our country out of what Krugman refers to as the “Long Gilded Age”, thereby bringing us a degree of economic and social equality never before seen here, and creating an American middle class.

Krugman notes several factors that contributed to the rise of a Republican Party with an agenda that is harmful to the vast majority of Americans. At the top of that list is racism, especially the racism of Southern White males. That begs the question: Since racism has always existed in our country, why was it not until 1980 that movement conservatism began taking over our country and dismantling the New Deal? The answer to this question may have been provided by Lyndon Johnson himself, as he is said to have said as he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “We have lost the South for a generation.”


The Losing of the South, 1961-2004

For many years prior to and following FDR’s presidency, the Democratic Party was an odd mixture of very strange bedfellows indeed: Liberals who believed strongly in the principles advanced by the New Deal; and conservative racist. Southern whites belonged to the Democratic Party mainly because the Republican Party was the Party of Lincoln, who decreed an end to slavery, and the Party that passed the 13th through 15th Amendments, which attempted to give the former slaves rights similar to those enjoyed by other Americans. That of course was a long time ago (1865-70). But old habits die hard, and as long as the Democratic Party didn’t go too far towards advancing the rights of African-Americans, the South was content to remain attached to the Democratic Party.

But with the passage of legislation like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, all that changed, as conservative white Southerners began to leave the Democratic Party in droves. The extent of Southern antipathy to the Civil Rights Act can be understood by looking at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Vote_totals">Senate vote totals for the Civil Rights Act. Despite the fact that a Democratic presidential administration sponsored the bill, a much larger percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for it:

Republicans: 27 aye, 6 no (including the lone Southern Senate Republican)
Democrats: 46 aye, 21 no
 Non-Southern Democrats: 45 aye, 1 no
 Southern Democrats: 1 aye, 20 no

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what has happened in American politics from 1961 (prior to the Kennedy/Johnson push to increase the rights of African-Americans) to 2004 (the last time that Republicans had control of Congress):

House of Representatives
Following the 1960 election, Democrats held a huge 89 seat lead in the House (263-174). By 2004, Republicans held a 30 seat lead, a loss of 119 net seats for the Democrats. Where did all those seats go to? In the South after the 1960 election the Democrats held a 102-9 advantage in the House, an advantage of 93 seats. By 2004 Republicans held the lead in the South by 83-48, a net loss for Democrats of 35 seats. The difference in the South between the Democratic lead in 1960 and their deficit in 2004 was a loss of 128 net seats – more than their total loss of House seats between those two dates. In the midst of this huge loss of Southern House seats, the Democrats actually picked up seats outside of the South, going from a net deficit of 4 seats after the 1960 election to a lead of 5 seats after the 2004 election.

Senate
A similar dynamic is seen in the U.S. Senate: Following the 1960 election, Democrats held a 30 seat lead in the Senate (65-35). By 2004, Republicans held a 10 seat lead, a loss of 40 net seats for the Democrats. In the South after the 1960 election the Democrats held a 22-0 advantage in the Senate. By 2004 Republicans held the lead in the South by 18-4, a net loss for Democrats of 14 seats. The difference in the South between the Democratic lead in 1960 and their deficit in 2004 was a loss of 36 net seats – exactly 90% of their total loss. In the midst of this huge loss of Southern Senate seats, the Democrats lost only 4 Senate seats outside of the South, going from a net lead of 8 seats after 1960 to a lead of 4 seats after the 2004 election.

Electoral votes for President
In the 1960 election, Kennedy won the electoral vote count over Richard Nixon by 303-219, a net advantage of 84 electoral votes. In 2004, George Bush won (and stole) a lead in electoral votes of 286 to 251, a deficit of 35 net electoral votes for the Democrat candidate, John Kerry. The difference between the two elections is a net loss of 119 electoral votes for the Democratic Party. But in the South the Democratic candidate won by 48 electoral votes in 1960 (81-33, losing only Tennessee, Florida, and Virginia), while he lost all of the South’s 153 electoral votes in 2004 (legitimately and not). The net loss in the South between the two elections was 201 electoral votes, while outside of the South, the Democrats picked up 82 electoral votes.

Thus the South accounted for more than the total net loss of Congressional seats and loss of presidential electoral votes between 1960 and 2004.


Evidence of Southern racism today

Some might object that the political loss of the South for the Democratic Party isn’t necessarily attributed to racism because it is much less racist today than it was many years ago. That may be partially true, but there is nevertheless a great deal of evidence that racism is alive and flourishing in the South today.

Part of that evidence lies in stone monuments scattered throughout the Southern United States, which seek to justify slavery. James Loewen in “Lies Across America – What our Historic Sites Get Wrong”, explains that the southern landscape of the United States even today is filled with monuments and historical markers that celebrate and glorify the old Confederacy, with hardly a mention of the Union side of the Civil War, except in a very pejorative context. Worse yet, those monuments and historical markers do much to twist the facts, hide embarrassing events, and justify the “cause” that the Confederacy fought for. Here are three examples:

The Colfax Riot
An historical marker in Colfax Louisiana reads:

On this site occurred the Colfax Riot in which three white men and 150 Negroes were slain. This event on April 13, 1873, marked the end of carpetbag misrule in the South.

Actually, the “Colfax Riot” was a massacre, the purpose of which was to overthrow the elected Republican governor of Louisiana and replace him with a Democratic governor (In those days, the Democrats were the racist Party and the Republicans were the anti-racist Party).

And basically, the term “carpetbag misrule” is a euphemism that refers to an electoral system whereby black former slaves were given the right to vote, by virtue of the 15th Amendment to our Constitution. That is what the “Colfax Riot” was all about. By failing to note anything about the reasons for the “Colfax Riot”, the historical marker essentially equates “misrule” with Black voting rights, and it justifies the massacre of 153 people carried out for the sole purpose of disenfranchising African-Americans – and it does all this while imputing a noble cause to the outrage. Loewen describes the significance of the event:

The Colfax massacre was also a turning point because it showed the inability or at least the unwillingness of the United States to enforce Reconstruction laws, including the 14th and 15th amendments…. The Supreme Court… holding that the 14th and 15th amendments only prohibited violations of black persons’ rights by states, not by individuals or organizations. Thus it gave a green light to private terrorism… Colfax thus became not only the spark, but the blueprint for overthrowing Radical (Republican) rule.

The Good Darky
In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, there stood, in the words of a Guide to Louisiana, “a bronze figure of an old Negro, hat in hand, smiling with shoulders bent”, long known as “The Good Darky”. At the dedication of the statue in 1927, the following resolution was adopted:

Resolved that the faithful and devoted service rendered by the old Southern slaves, in working and making crops and taking care of the white women and children, while their masters were away fighting to keep them in slavery, has never been equaled… Those who are old enough to remember can tell you how the slaves remained at home and took care of everything…

Needless to say, the purpose of that statue and others like it is two-fold: It provides a model for African-Americans for how they were supposed to comport themselves in the brutal segregation regimes of the old South; and, it perpetuates the totally false myth that the slavery system was beneficial to and eagerly embraced by the slaves of the Ante-bellum South.

PS – In 1968 “The Good Darky” was toppled and thrown into a river, probably by a black person who was unable to appreciate the virtues of slavery. It was rescued from the river, stored for several years, and finally put into a museum, where it apparently remains today and is known as “Uncle Jack”.

Honoring a vicious racist
Historic markers in Tennessee honor Nathan Bedford Forrest above any other person in the state, with a statue, an obelisk, and 32 historical markers – more than the three former U.S. Presidents from Tennessee combined, and more than any other person in any state in our country. Yet, as Loewen explains:

In so doing, the landscape honors one of the most vicious racists in U.S. history. Forrest had been a slave trader before the Civil War and sold people brought in illegally from Africa half a century after Congress supposedly ended that trade in 1808. During the war, he presided over massacres of surrendered black troops… After the war he hired black convict labor, the closest thing to slave labor, for his cotton plantation near Memphis.

In choosing to honor such a man above all others, the authorities in Tennessee essentially are honoring and justifying the slave trade, slavery itself, war crimes, and the terror used to subjugate the Black race for several decades following the Civil War.


Evidence of racism from present day Southern voting patterns
Additional evidence of persisting Southern racism comes from current Southern voting patterns. Two crucial Senate votes that I believe are indicative of racism are the votes for the Iraq War Resolution in 2002 and for the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The former is suggestive of a willingness to go war against Iraq based on the slimmest of evidence, which suggests a certain amount of callousness towards the lives of Iraqis, who differ from us culturally, ethnically, and in their religion; the latter indicated, among other things, a willingness to indefinitely imprison and torture those who differ from us culturally, ethnically, and in religion, without any of the Constitutional safeguards against false imprisonment enjoyed by American citizens.

Of 23 Senators who voted against the Iraq War Resolution, only one came from one of the eleven states of the old Confederacy (Bob Graham from Florida). The other 21 Southern Senators all voted for the Iraq War Resolution. For the Military Commissions Act, the Senate vote was 21-1 in favor by Southern Senators, compared to 44-33 in favor outside of the South.


The dynamics of Southern White antipathy to the Democratic Party

It wasn’t just the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act that turned Southern whites away from the Democratic Party. It also had to do with the general increase in social programs that tended to result in more economic and social equality. Since the South is a relatively poor region, one might expect that Southerners would be interested in more economic and social equality, the hallmark of New Deal Democrats and liberals. But that would mean helping out racial minorities as well, something for which many Southern whites have a great aversion. An assessment (see 3rd quote) by three Harvard economists describes that dynamic:

Racial discord plays a critical role in determining beliefs about the poor. Since minorities are highly over-represented amongst the poorest Americans, any income-based redistribution measures will redistribute particularly to minorities. The opponents of redistribution have regularly used race based rhetoric to fight left wing policies… America’s troubled race relations are clearly a major reason for the absence of an American welfare state.

Krugman explains that William Buckley Jr. was an early and influential pioneer in providing the intellectual underpinnings for racism. In 1957 his magazine, National Review, published an article that made this point:

The central question that emerges… is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally? The sobering answer is Yes – the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race… National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct… It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.

It remained for a charismatic politician, Ronald Reagan, to pick up this idea and run with it, while being careful to speak in a code that wouldn’t alienate too many non-racist whites. Reagan was a master at doing that, which accounted for much of his political success, which greatly accelerated the hemorrhage of racist Southern whites to the Republican Party. Krugman explains:

The Ronald Reagan who became California’s Governor in 1966 (served as the) vehicle for white voters angry at the bums on welfare… The image is clear: Welfare chiselers were driving up decent peoples’ taxes. Never mind that it wasn’t true… that “welfare” never was a major cost of government, and that cheating never was a significant problem… Reagan didn’t need to point out that a substantial portion of those who entered the welfare roles were black.

Why did this dynamic apply so much more to the old Confederacy than outside of it? It all has to do with their legacy of slavery. The old Confederacy adopted virulently racist attitudes in order to justify an evil system that clearly went against the principles or their religion and the stated principles upon which our country was founded. It was imperative to their self esteem to maintain their racist myths, which rationalized the system upon which their economic well being depended. This attitude was then transmitted down through many generations.


Taking back our country

In the last parts of his book, Krugman provides an overview of the situation now facing us and comments on where he thinks we need to go from here. In his first paragraph of his last chapter he concisely spells out the difference between us and our political opponents:

One of the seeming paradoxes of America in the early 21st century is that those of us who call ourselves liberal are, in an important sense, conservative, while those who call themselves conservative are for the most part deeply radical. Liberals want to restore the middle-class society I grew up in; those who call themselves conservative want to take us back to the Gilded Age, undoing a century of history. Liberals defend long standing institutions like Social Security and Medicare; those who call themselves conservative want to privatize or undermine those institutions. Liberals want to honor our democratic principles and the rule of law; those who call themselves conservative want the president to have dictatorial powers and have applauded the Bush administration as it imprisons people without charges and subjects them to torture…. with a political strategy that rests, at its core, on exploiting the unwillingness of some Americans to grant equal rights to their fellow citizens – to those who don’t share their skin color, don’t share their faith, don’t share their sexual preferences.

Krugman believes that race as a winning issue for Republicans is in its last throes: Our population is becoming more non-white; the immigration issue is pitting wealthy Republicans who greatly desire a source of cheap labor against those who bitterly oppose immigration because of their racism or the job competition it brings or a combination of those two reasons; and most important, Americans are becoming less racist on average, as exemplified by a doubling of those who approve of inter-racial marriage from 36% in 1978 to 77% in 2007. Krugman notes:

This may not seem directly relevant to politics… But the ability of the right to exploit racial tension has little to do with actual policies, and a lot to do with tapping into primal emotions. If those primal emotions are losing their intensity – and they are – the strategy loses its forces.

The Virginia Senate seat loss of George Allen in 2006 is an excellent example of how racism can backfire on a political candidate in today’s political environment.

With regard to political strategy, Krugman recommends:

The only way a progressive agenda can be enacted is if Democrats have both the presidency and a large enough majority in Congress to overcome Republican opposition. And achieving that kind of political preponderance will require leadership that makes opponents of the progressive agenda pay a political price for their obstructionism – leadership that, like FDR, welcomes the hatred of the interest groups trying to prevent us from making our society better.

A few comments on the backlash to the Civil Rights movement

It has occurred to me that some might think that I am objecting to the Civil Rights movement when I say that it contributed to the radical Republican takeover of Congress with the consequent partial dismantling of the New Deal. That is absolutely NOT my intention.

The Civil Rights movement was absolutely necessary for our country. Without it we could not begin to make good on the promise of the ideals which founded our country. We have a long way to go on that issue, but the Civil Rights movement was a necessary big step in the right direction. And furthermore, I honestly don’t think that we need racists in our Party. They belong in the Republican Party, and now that they’re there we no longer have to collaborate with them. Yes, I would appreciate their votes. But not if it means having to denounce everything that we stand for.

I feel much the same way about the need to remove from office our current president and vice president. There may be some political risk involved (though I believe that risk is greatly exaggerated), but to allow this presidency to stand without fighting to bring it down says to the American people and the rest of the world that we are a country that has almost completely lost our moral bearings, and that we don’t care enough about that to do what needs to be done.

[EFerrari]

1. The backlash against the Civil Rights movement may

win elections for the Thuggery in the short term. In the long term, they are simply driving people away from their pernicious party.

[Time for change]

11. I agree

It's impossible for me to believe that this will do them good in the long run. It is more likely to be their downfall, as a counter-backlash seems to be already gathering.

I always felt that the coalition of liberal New Dealers with racists was a very fragile one. It had to break up sooner or later if we were ever going to move on.

[ck4829]

2. Here's what Paul Weyrich, a Right Wing Activist, said about the Christian Right in a conference

In Thy Kingdom Come, Randall Balmer recounts comments that Paul M. Weyrich, who he describes as "one of the architects of the Religious Right in the late 1970s", made at a conference, sponsored by a Religious Right organization, that they both attended in Washington in 1990:

In the course of one of the sessions, Weyrich tried to make a point to his Religious Right brethren (no women attended the conference, as I recall). Let's remember, he said animatedly, that the Religious Right did not come together in response to the Roe decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got us going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies.

Bob Jones University had policies which refused black students enrolment until 1971, admitted only married blacks from 1971 to 1975, and prohibited interracial dating and marriage between 1975 and 2000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_right#Diversity.2C_apartheid.2C_and_indigenous_rights

[Time for change]

23. Weyrich is a scary guy

He's listed in Jack Huberman's "101 People Who Are Really Screwing up America" at # 9. Here are some quotes from Weyrich:

We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structure of this country... The real enemy is the secular humanist mindset that seeks to destroy everything that is good in this society... Muslims should be encouraged to leave America. They are a 5th column in this country.

He helped to found the Moral Majority and the Heritage Foundation.

[defendandprotect]

33. Note: The GOP gave the start up money for the "Moral Majority" ---

Basically, you come full circle back to the sexist, racist, homophobic business party
funding a religous movement . . . because this religious movement underpins discriminatory
exploitation.

Without exploitation there is no grand profit for "business."

And, patriarchal religion underpins all exploitation --- from nature and natural resources to animal-life -- and even to other human beings, based on various myths of inferiority.

[U4ikLefty]

3. Great read!!! K&R

[Blue_Tires]

4. ttt

[OHdem10]

5. Never underestimate the fury and anger that errupted

and in some places exists to this day---Brown V Bd. Education.

Exploitation at all levels. Politicians playing on emotions.
The Poor Whites have been convinced that their tax money
goes to pay for welfare for blacks.

Educated blacks would take their jobs.

At the base of all of this lies FEAR.

Things have improved in the south, but red meat is still thrown
to get votes.

Here is the perfect example and I cringe when people in our own
party use it as they triangulate.

"Personal Responsibility"--is directly aimed to connote--No Welfare.
Today, they speak in code.

[IsItJustMe]

17. Yep, and another new code word that is being thrown around by Dem's running now is the

"middle class". The term "poor people" seems to have disappeared from the political dialog.

[Time for change]

47. Yes -- Krugman noted Brown vs. Board of Education too

Anything that improved the life of minorities was anethema to the racists and contributed to their exodus from the Democratic Party.

[stillcool]

6. it never ends, does it?

I thought that the 60's brought about radical changes in the minds of Americans..little did I know it was just my mind that was radically changed. Race, Religion, Sex. Identity. Some belong..and some..not so much. Funny.

1790 Only white male adult property-owners have the right to vote.

1810 Last religious prerequisite for voting is eliminated.

1850 Property ownership and tax requirements eliminated by 1850. Almost all adult white males could vote.

1855 Connecticut adopts the nation's first literacy test for voting. Massachusetts follows suit in 1857. The tests were implemented to discriminate against Irish-Catholic immigrants.

1870 The 15th Amendment is passed. It gives former slaves the right to vote and protects the voting rights of adult male citizens of any race.

1889 Florida adopts a poll tax. Ten other southern states will implement poll taxes.

1890 Mississippi adopts a literacy test to keep African Americans from voting. Numerous other states—not just in the south—also establish literacy tests. However, the tests also exclude many whites from voting. To get around this, states add grandfather clauses that allow those who could vote before 1870, or their descendants, to vote regardless of literacy or tax qualifications.

1913 The 17th Amendment calls for members of the U.S. Senate to be elected directly by the people instead of State Legislatures.

1915 Oklahoma was the last state to append a grandfather clause to its literacy requirement (1910). In Guinn v. United States the Supreme Court rules that the clause is in conflict with the 15th Amendment, thereby outlawing literacy tests for federal elections.

1920 The 19th Amendment guarantees women's suffrage.

1924 Indian Citizenship Act grants all Native Americans the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote in federal elections.

1944 The Supreme Court outlaws "white primaries" in Smith v. Allwright (Texas). In Texas, and other states, primaries were conducted by private associations, which, by definion, could exclude whomever they chose. The Court declares the nomination process to be a public process bound by the terms of 15th Amendment.

1957 The first law to implement the 15th amendment, the Civil Rights Act, is passed. The Act set up the Civil Rights Commission—among its duties is to investigate voter discrimination.

1960 In Gomillion v. Lightfoot (Alabama) the Court outlaws "gerrymandering."
1961 The 23rd Amendment allows voters of the District of Columbia to participate in presidential elections.
1964 The 24th Amendment bans the poll tax as a requirement for voting in federal elections.
1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., mounts a voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama, to draw national attention to African-American voting rights.
1965 The Voting Rights Act protects the rights of minority voters and eliminates voting barriers such as the literacy test. The Act is expanded and renewed in 1970, 1975, and 1982.
1966 The Supreme Court, in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, eliminates the poll tax as a qualification for voting in any election. A poll tax was still in use in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia.
1966 The Court upholds the Voting Rights Act in South Carolina v. Katzenbach.

1970 Literacy requirements are banned for five years by the 1970 renewal of the Voting Rights Act. At the time, eighteen states still have a literacy requirement in place. In Oregon v. Mitchell, the Court upholds the ban on literacy tests, which is made permanent in 1975. Judge Hugo Black, writing the court's opinion, cited the "long history of the discriminatory use of literacy tests to disenfranchise voters on account of their race" as the reason for their decision.
1971 The 26th amendment sets the minimum voting age at 18.
1972 In Dunn v. Blumstein, the Supreme Court declares that lengthy residence requirements for voting in state and local elections is unconstitutional and suggests that 30 days is an ample period.
1995 The Federal "Motor Voter Law" takes effect, making it easier to register to vote.
2003 Federal Voting Standards and Procedures Act requires states to streamline registration, voting, and other election procedures.

[angrycarpenter]

7. lived in the south all my life

the casual racism that is almost universal among the working class southern males has been a constant irritation to me all my life.

I have been verbally and physically attacked for my progressive opinions. The only thing that these people hate (and fear) worse than a black person is a white person who would defend them.

I see many who claim to be proud of their southern heritage and I always wonder what they are actually proud of. It must be the same as the diehard fans of a losing sports team.

most of the time I am ashamed to be southern especially when some bigot opens his mouth and claims to speak for southerners in general.

[Time for change]

26. You ought to be proud

that you have the courage to remain who you are under what appears to be a good deal of pressure to "go along" with prevailing opinion.

[defendandprotect]

34. But . . . this racism was taught to them by the those who actually "owned" Africans enslaved to them

and those same people who were taught this racism also went to war to protect the interests of those "owners."

[defendandprotect]

36. Notice that you specifically say . . .

"... among the working class southern males ... " --

I've always been of the opinion that this racism against African-Americans has also helped to keep
women less than free in the South.

Additionally, I would cite religion in the South as a large piece of the racism puzzle there --
and with sexism, of course ---

And, evidently, a good part of the MIC is now in the South -- further complicating the macho/sexist and racist sentiments --


???????

Also, IMO, comedy goes a long to wake people up --- it punctures our stupidities ---
helps us see ourselves in the most ridiculous terms ---
but also laughing at the powerful does a lot for all of us.
I've noted the rise of Southern comics -- some of them I've watched and enjoyed ---
an I'm wondering if this trend suggests a loosening up?

[angrycarpenter]

38. the trend is toward chaos

sophistication of any sort is disappearing at an alarming rate.

On A recent trip to Ga. to visit in-laws no one was interested in talking politics with me. The main topic seemed to be Jamie Lynn Spears pregnancy.

The only news they watched was the last 5 minutes before wheel of fortune came on.

Their opinion of GWB was that he is a good man doing a difficult job and we should just leave him to it and hope for the best.

[defendandprotect]

40. Ouch --- !

[Mendocino]

59. What...no NASCAR?!

[flashl]

8. Current events thats a reminder, nothing changed

A campaign is underway to ban affirmative action in five states already embroiled in debates over illegal immigration.

Efforts are proceeding in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma to put initiatives on November ballots that would end programs to increase minority and female participation in government and education.

The push is led by Ward Connerly, a California management consultant who successfully ran similar campaigns in California, Washington and Michigan.

It is part of Connerly's effort to ban race- and gender-based policies nationwide.

The initiatives will add to the racially charged atmosphere in state elections, says Michael Kanner, a political science professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. All five states have had big increases in their Hispanic population since 2000, leading to racial tensions and debates over illegal immigration.

DU Post - Race Baiting Ballots

Nearly 16,000 contested Florida voters will be back on the rolls by the end of today now that Secretary of State Kurt Browning has lost his latest legal round in an Atlanta federal court.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday denied Browning's request to temporarily put on hold a ruling by a Gainesville federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Stephan Mickle Dec. 18 ordered the state to stop turning away would be voters if their applications failed to match driver license or Social Security records. Mickle sided with the NAACP and voting rights advocates who challenged a 2002 federal law designed to crack down on voting fraud.


DU Post - Florida to 'regroup' over voter rights issue

[defendandprotect]

39. Though I recall reading that these affirmative-action programs were a compromise

versus some more powerful remedies, results of class action lawsuits at the time ---
and overall, the opposition to them still is a credit to the fact that they have worked in large part --


and let's hope that the public will be able to see thru these efforts ---

[Time for change]

51. I think we have a long way to go, but I do believe that we have made substantial improvement

Certainly minority groups fare much better in our country today than prior to the passage of Civil Rights and voting rights legislation, notwithstanding the fact that Republicans still find many ways to get around those laws.

Krugman talks about how many more Americans today approve of inter-racial marriage than was the case a few decades ago.

And then there is the fact that no national politician dare use openly racist rhetoric today. Look what happened to George Allen when he was caught doing that. Yes, they get around it by sending out racist messages in code. But I think that the fact that it can't be done openly today says something about changing attitudes in our country.

[ConsAreLiars]

9. Great summary - too bad that the dominant forces in the Democratic Party

chose to make up for the loss of most of their racists by selling the party off to the trans-national corporate money men.

[Time for change]

48. Thank you -- Krugman talked about the disproportionate political influence of the wealthy

He talked about how that creates a vicious cycle whereby political influence leads to legislation that further widens the income gap and thereby increases the political influence of the wealthy. But he doesn't think that that's as important a factor in the repeated election of radical conservatives in our country as the way they've used racism to their advantage. In other words, he feels that as their ability to use racism to win votes runs out of steam they will lose their hold on our country (as is already beginning to happen), as long as progressives can muster some good leadership to show voters that they have a clear choice.

I don't know about that. I don't think I'm quite as optimistic about it as Krugman is. But anyhow, it's an excellent book.

[Karenina]

10. K&R!!!

[marmar]

12. K&R! .... Great piece......

Somewhere Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez are saying "WTF?!?" :wtf:

[bluerum]

13. Excellent post. Good reading. I am going to take a look at Krugmans book.

[Time for change]

54. Thank you -- I highly recommend Krugman's book

It's highly informative, very well explained, and easy to read.

Here is another post where I made extensive use of Krugman's book:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2275383

[Toots]

14. Pretty much explains why the Confederate Flag is the Hallmark of the GOP

It IS Southern Heritage...

[AspenRose]

55. FYI: "Texification of the GOP"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2842985

[The Wizard]

15. I agree 100%

The root of Nixon's Southern Strategy was the underlying message-- You're a bigot? So are we. Support us and minorities with outsized man parts won't be having their way with your women, because if they do, you'll be reduced to a lifetime of hand relief.
The words liberal and Democrat are code for Jews and Coloreds.
Although the South is in flux, there are still enough bigots to get another bigot elected president. The only way a Democrat can win the Presidency is for the candidate to be a southern white male. Can we run the risk of a falling deeper into the fascist/divisive hole the Republicans have dug?
One of the reasons they all want to carry guns is because the guns mask their insecurity over their man parts. Then again, with the current crop of criminals in control, a well armed citizenry may be the best countervailing force against labor camps and a government modeled on Hitler's Reich.

[Echo In Light]

16. Excellent post

[IsItJustMe]

18. No doubt about it, tribalism runs deep, and not just in the south, I might add. Race has

had a profound impact on the shaping of our society and politics in this country. Thanks for the post. We all need reminders from time to time.

Many of the Dems have been trying, for many years now, to do the right thing.

[Brewman_Jax]

19. K&R

:kick:

[Octafish]

20. Outstanding post, Time for change. Thank you!

Why the present model is one of economic feudalism: "During the war, he presided over massacres of surrendered black troops… After the war he hired black convict labor, the closest thing to slave labor, for his cotton plantation near Memphis."

When it comes to economics, Martin A. Lee documents the interesting connection between conservatives and their fascist brethren:

With Times Tough, Fascism Coming Back

By Martin A. Lee
Los Angeles Times, 21 September 1997

WASHINGTON -- An Italian wine company recently sparked an uproar when it introduced a new brand with a picture of Adolf Hitler on its label. The same company also produces bottles of wine featuring Benito Mussolini's picture. A marketing strategy that uses such images might be dismissed as a tasteless joke if not for the fact that a multifaceted neofascist revival has gained alarming momentum in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

The revival is not orchestrated by a sieg-heiling dictator flanked by men in brown shirts and swastika armbands. Rather, a new breed of right-wing extremists have trimmed their sails to suit the political moment. Realizing that the fascist game can be played in many ways, the more sophisticated tacticians underwent an ideological face-lift and mainstreamed their message for the sake of democratic appearances.

The end of the bipolar Yalta system demagnetized everybody's compass and provided fresh opportunities for the Front National in France, the Austrian Freedom Party, Italy's National Alliance, Vlaams Blok in Belgium and other right-wing extremist parties that have successfully tapped into widespread post-Cold-War uncertainties. The rise of these mass-based electoral movements has coincided with a dramatic increase in hate crimes throughout Western Europe, where a racial assault occurs once every three minutes, according to the European Parliament.

Peddling a ready-made politics for the economically disenchanted, far-right demagogues have touched a raw nerve by deceptively linking jobless statistics to the number of guest workers and asylum seekers in their countries. The presence of 20 million migrants in Western Europe is perhaps the most visible sign of the major structural transformation that has accompanied the emergence of a global economy, with its interdependent markets, unfettered capital mobility and novel information technologies.

Third World and Eastern European immigrants are routinely depicted as a threat to national identity, as well as economic stability, at a time when the Western European work force is reeling from high unemployment, stagnating wages and cutbacks in social services.

Neofascists posing as national populists have gained at the ballot box by coupling their anti-immigrant message with harsh denunciations of the 1991 Maastricht Treaty and its plans for a common European currency. They have also benefited from foraging on a political terrain where the ideological distance between the mainstream parties has shrunk. This has propelled the growth of the extreme right, which appeals to disillusioned voters by assuming the mantle of the opposition and attacking a corrupt, bipartisan status quo.

CONTINUED...

Things have gotten worse than Lee imagined. Most today don't even know they are slaves.

Thanks, Time for change. Your posts are important resources for democracy.

[Time for change]

42. Thank you Octafish -- I wonder what the European Neofascists' end game is?

Are they after power, or are they just trying to spread their hate? Probably a combination of the two, I suppose.

[Octafish]

58. Survival. Culling the herd

At best, they are sociopathic eugenicists.



Planetary wide depopulation is their aim, IMO:

Culling the herd

By Sheila Samples
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Commentary
Dec 19, 2007, 00:18

“Everything you can imagine is real” -- Pablo Picasso

In 1974, a year after orchestrating a mass terror bombing of Cambodia -- after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize -- Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his National Security Council completed “National Security Study Memo 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” This document, whose sharp edges are dulled by page after leaden page of how to reduce overpopulation in the Third World through birth control and “other” population-reduction programs, was classified until 1989, but was almost immediately accepted as US policy, and remains the US blueprint for ethnic cleansing today.

It is difficult to imagine the staggering number of innocent humans who have perished through war or famine as a direct result of Kissinger’s half-century obsession with, and lust for, genocide. It’s even more difficult to imagine the cruel indifference with which Kissinger, and those like him in positions of political and corporate power -- the elite -- continue to plan the elimination of millions, even billions. All under the guise of national security, or to spread freedom . . . democracy . . .

Kissinger targeted a number of “key countries” whose populations, he said, must be curtailed and controlled lest they gain economic, political and military strength, and thus threaten US strategic interests. “Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the Third World,” Kissinger said, “because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.”

SNIP...

We’re like herds of cattle, grazing placidly, unable or unwilling to imagine that we might share the same fate as the millions throughout the Third World targeted by the elite as “bottom feeders,” contributing nothing -- eating into their profit -- gluttons who must be dispensed with. Any rancher or farmer will tell you that it’s good business to cull the herd for a variety of reasons, such as market outlook, cash flow, or just to maintain a healthier, more easily controlled mass of cattle. It makes no sense to keep problem cows, the elderly, the ill or nonproductive around. There comes a time when you must cut your losses and cull the herd.

There are those who, unlike Kissinger and his co-conspirators, are not interested in profit or power, but believe fervently that human population is destroying the planet. Perhaps the most outspoken is University of Texas evolutionary scientist Dr. Eric R. Pianka, who gave a speech in March 2006 advocating the elimination of 90 percent of Earth’s population.

According to Forrest M. Mims III, chairman of the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science and the editor of The Citizen Scientist, Pianka shrugged aside war and famine -- too slow -- and said “the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die” is disease. Pianka advocates airborne Ebola because, he explained, “it is highly lethal, and it kills in days, instead of years.”

Pianka drew rounds of enthusiastic applause throughout his speech, and a standing ovation when he threw in the Bird Flu for good measure, and quipped gleefully, “We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth.” Five hours later, the university presented Pianka with a plaque, not for winning hands down as “Mad Scientist of the Year,” but in recognition of his being named 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

CONTINUED...

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2757.shtml

Under present conditions, the planet can't sustain a middle class of seven billion.

The sensible approach is to ration what is on the lifeboat and use the time-savings to figure out and implement a strategy for sustainability. Unfortunately, that costs money.

The NAZI and COMMIE solution is to exterminate the unessential. It's cheaper.

[Peace 2008]

21. Thanks for posting

[EFerrari]

22. Kick

[tbyg52]

24. I would like everyone to know

that Time for change is an *official* pundit! This post just turned up in a Google *news* search.

[tom_paine]

25. Apologies to DU's Southern contingent, but this is the truth and reality of the situation

This is NOT Southern Bashing. There are many good and fine and decent people in the South, as there are everywhere.

But this is the reality of the situation we must face.

As with what is happeneing all over the nation now, but unfortunately even moreso in the South, the good and fine and decent Americans everywhere are being pushed out of power bythe Bushies, whouse every vile and criminal dirty trick in the book to advance their evil NeoRebConfederate Agenda, which has merged into the NeoCon and BushPutinist Totalitarian Agenda.

May God help us all.

[Time for change]

43. Right, this is absolutely NOT Southern bashing

Just bashing of the racist ones, which certainly doesn't include them all and may not even include a majority -- I don't know. But it includes enough of them to tip the political balance towards politicians who use racist (though often in code) rhetoric and legislate with a racist attitude.

DUers from the South should especially be applauded for going against the flow and maintaining their humanity, sometimes against substantial pressure to "flow with the tide".

[indepat]

27. Speaking of my native Tennessee's obsession with Nathan Bedford Forrest, the good(?) people

of Tennessee turned an outstanding US senator (Gore, Sr.) out of office for having had the temerity to support civil rights legislation. We all can see by who occupies those two senate seats today how far Tennesseans have come along in embracing civil rights for all.

[Karenina]

28. NOTHING will change

until we see each other as FAMILY.

[Time for change]

56. And not only that

They also voted against Gore Sr.'s son for president in 2000, even though he had been their Senator for many years, thereby inaugurating perhaps our nation's worst nightmare.

[indepat]

61. Yes, had Tennessee voted for Gore, what happened in Florida would have been academic, but

with Tennessee in the bag for junior, the forces of evil were able to unleash their full range of dirty tricks/voter fraud and the felonious five on Florida.

[Cyrano]

29. Great post. K&R. I really believe that today's battles over immigration are

a continuation of the Republican "Southern Strategy." The bigots know that the "N" word can no longer be uttered with impunity. So they needed a new "Them."

The new "Thems" are immigrants -- mostly Latinos, Muslims or others whose color might be a bit too "brownish." How many of these haters are really talking about Western European immigrants? When's the last time you heard someone talking about "those damn Brits taking jobs away from hard-working Americans?"

It's time that everyone recognized that the phrase "illegal immigrants" is nothing more than code for a new generation of people to hate. And it's past time that we all started shunning our own home-grown haters.

[Time for change]

57. Thank you -- I believe you're entirely correct about the immigration thing

[Naythan]

30. excellent post

thanks for sharing

[Karenina]

31. Welcome to DU, Naythan.

[DeanDem10]

32. Time for Change

Thank you for this. An excellent post.:yourock:

[JustAnotherGen]

35. k/r and bookmarking!

Excellent points are made - I've got to buy Krugman's book! Re: Nathan Bedford Forrest . . . that's okay. :sarcasm: Look at how many Forts are named after *GASP* Confederates. It's like tacit approval by the Federal Government for bad behavior.

Fort Rucker, Alabama, Colonel Edmund W. Rucker
Fort Benning, Georgia, Brig. Gen. Henry L. Benning
Fort Gordon, Georgia, Brig. Gen. John Brown Gordon
Camp Toombs renamed Camp Toccoa Currahee Mountain, Georgia Gen. Robert Toombs
Camp Beauregard Alexander, LA., Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard
Fort Polk, Louisiana Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk
Fort Hood Kileen, Texas, Gen. John Bell Hood
Fort A. P. Hill, Virginia, Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell "A.P." Hill
Fort Lee Petersburg, Virginia, Gen. Robert E. Lee
Fort Pickett Blackstone, Virginia, Maj. Gen. George Edward Pickett
Camp Stuart Newport News, Virginia, Gen. J.E.B. Stuart
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Gen. Braxton Bragg

Fort Jackson South Carolina. You can travel on:
Magruder Avenue (Major General John Bankhead "Prince John" Magruder)
Hampton Parkway (Lieutenant General Wade Hampton)
Benning Road (Brigadier General Henry Lewis Benning)
Lee Road (Gen. Robert E. Lee)


Just some food for thought . . .

[Thothmes]

46. Ever notice

that Army posts in the North are named for Officers that served in the Union Army. This was by agreement that was made in the 1880s if I remember correctly.

[ScooterFibby]

37. Don't forget to confront your own internal racism...

... the racism that everyone has inside.

Part of our nature is tribal, and that part automatically distrusts those who do not look like or smell like us. This is lizard level neurology - you have to confront it and overcome it deliberately.

Unfortunately, our media perpetuates and reinforces racism by presenting mostly stereotypical images of others.

Great post, by the way. Hopefully a southern Democratic candidate can bring Southerners back to the Democratic fold.

[Time for change]

44. Thank you -- another way the media perpetuates racism:

By never talking about Iraqi casualties -- only American casualties -- the send out the message that Iraqi lives are expendable IMO.

[defendandprotect]

41. GOP has specialized in sexist, racist, homophobic exploitation ---

[Prophet 451]

45. bookmark for morning n/t

[Gman]

49. Nice writeup, but it sounds like a Northerner's view of the South

You argue that Johnson's prophecy that the South would be lost for a generation due to his passage of the Civil Rights Act is solely fulfilled and Johnson was responsible for the Democratic party's losses in the South. If this were true, Jimmy Carter would never have carried the South the way he did in 1976, some 12 years after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. You also completely disregard and fail to mention the staying power of the New Deal among the WWII generation in holding people in the South and elsewhere in the Democratic Party. Only after the WWII generation started dying off in the 1980's did the South start to drift away from the Democratic party.

There is so much more you completely fail to mention. If anything, the loss of the South to the Republican Party began with the exit of the so-called Reagan Democrats who rejected the leftward shift of the Democratic Party on a great many issues besides civil rights. Suffice to say that rather than a shift in power of the parties in the South. What actually happened is a realignment of ideologies between the parties. The Democratic Party became the party of liberalism, and the Republican Party became the party of racism and conservatism. If you want to put a date on it, I would say it started happening around 1978 which was the year Bill Clements became the first GOP governor in Texas since Reconstruction, some 14 years after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. While the Democratic Party dominated the South after the Civil War, primarily due to the hatred for the Republican carpetbaggers, the two-party system came to be known in the South as the liberal Democrats versus the conservative Democrats.

I think that overall it is not even accurate to compare the Democratic Party pre-1980's with the Democratic Party since. Nor is it accurate to compare the GOP pre-1980's with the GOP today. The ideological shifts have caused these two parties to trade ideological places so that if you want to trace the conservative movement, you have to begin with the South during Reconstruction in the Democratic Party and then move on to the GOP post-1980's. You would trace liberalism similarly through the GOP and into the Democratic Party.

None of this is to discount the power of racism in the South as it was and continues to be a powerful force. But I think it is given too much credit in deciding why the Democratic Party lost the South.

[Time for change]

50. It's not true that loss of the South didn't start until the 1980s

Even as early as 1964, in the midst of one of the biggest landslide victories in the history of our country Johnson lost several Southern states that Kennedy had carried in 1960, including LA, MS, AL, GA, and SC. Carter was an anomaly since he was himself a Southerner, which certainly helped substantially in his carrying several southern states.

The staying power of the New Deal is not relevant to my discussion, since I am trying to explain why Democrats lost the South, not why some Southerners remained in the Democratic Party, which certainly was the case.

If your point is that many Southerners left the Democratic Party because of a leftward shift by the Democratic Party on issues other than Civil Rights, I also seriously disagree with that, because I don't believe there was any net leftward shift of the Democratic Party on non- Civil Rights issues in the 80s.

[Gman]

52. Of course there was a leftward shift in the Democratic Party

The rise of women's rights including Choice became big Democratic Party issues. Even things like workers' rights, and the "War On Poverty" were big Democratic Party issues. The WOP included not only poor Blacks, but poor Whites in Appalachia, and poor Hispanics. Urban Renewal implied these same groups. Decisions by the Warren Court became signature Democratic Party issues including not only the civil rights issues but also decisions like Gideon v. Wainwright or Miranda v. Arizona or even Griswold v. Connecticut. Ask any good batshit nuts Republic these days and they will swear to you that you really don't have a right to privacy. The actions of the neocons in their "war on terror" effectively neutralize Gideon v. Wainwright and even Miranda in many cases. The Republics have expressly been out to get Miranda for at least 10 years that I can chronicle. And, the very embracing of civil rights was in fact a big shift to the left.

I can go on and on. The Democratic Party did drift to the left and the GOP to the right and people realigned accordingly. But racism was not the sole reason by any stretch.

---on edit---
You also discount the cultivation by the GOP of an image of fiscal conservatism vs. the Democratic Congress in the 60's and 70's wartime economy of some pretty atrocious waste at times. This is not per se a leftward shift by the Democratic Party, but more that it went against Southern frugalness.

[Time for change]

53. I don't think so

The war on poverty was Johnson's creation. After him there was no more war on poverty. In that sense the Democratic poverty moved to the right since Johnson's time.

Furthermore, there was no Democratic president who was to the left of FDR, and no cluster of Democratic programs were to the left of the New Deal. Are you saying that the Democratic Party of the 1980s was to the left of the Democratic Party of the 1930s and early 40s under FDR?

As for the Warren Court, yes, they came up with a good many decisions that right wing ideologues hated, but that wasn't the work of the Democratic Party. And anyhow, Earl Warren was a Republican appointed by a Republican President.

[JustAnotherGen]

63. Gotta agree with you . . .

My paternal grandfather voted, as did his father, and his father's father.. . There was a clause that if your grandfather voted at a certain time - you could too (I think it's mentioned in the article). He also had the 'bank' to vote, and the education.

Those handful of blacks in the South that COULD vote (i.e. pass literacy tests and were fluent in several languages0, and had the money to 'buy their ability to vote' (if they weren't fluent in the language - generally had white friends who got the test ahead of time and/or gave them the answers) - had jumped from the Republican Party by as early as 1960 (He voted in the 1960 election for Kennedy). He was very clear to all of us when we were very young (voting is considered something close to a Human Right :-) in my father's family) that he WAS a Republican - but it's not what you've done for me in the Past, it's What Have You Done For Me Lately. Those were his exact words - and probably why I'll never in my life affiliate with the Republican party.


If the blacks jumped - it makes perfectly good sense that the minute LBJ signed that act - the whites 'jumped' too . . . albeit to the Republican Party where they would be welcome. Remember Barry Goldwater and his feelings on blacks?

[Karenina]

60. bttt!

:kick:

[Mark D.]

62. The Big Picture

Brilliant work first. This was an incredible read. But the big picture, always there, is how they differ so greatly. Why the north had less racists than the south. The role of ignorance. Now I mean averages, not totals. There are lots of stupid people up north and smart people down south. But as we know. Smarter folks might be indoors more doing the books, figuring things out. Less educated folks do more labor jobs on average. More labor jobs in the warmer places (the south). The evil among them didn't want to do all the work, or any of it. Enter slavery. As Michael Moore's cartoon points out so eloquently in "Bowling For Columbine", though about guns in general, it speaks of how the south, and America in large, could gather so much wealth. Have such a huge crop growing on incredibly fertile ground, planted, cared for, and harvested by people who worked for free (or for terrible living quarters; and eating the stuff the owners threw away (the greens from the root vegetables, and the innards of the animals they slaughtered). This allowed them to sell a product made for next to nothing for a massive mark-up.

No, they weren't stupid. Ignorance may not be the right word. Greed. They knew how to make money. They knew if/when slavery was banished, they'd loose the free labor. Again, the evils of corporations at work. Humans have a role, for as few of them, for as little pay possible, to make as cheap a product as possible, to sell for as much possible. Now those very owners would have to get off their collective ass and do the work. Or (gasp!) hire people for wages. Enough wages they can buy their own place to stay and food that isn't the scraps they throw away. That's going to take a lot of money. Who the hell do those workers think they are? Bring along child labor, prison labor etc. The need always to find the cheapest labor. You see where I'm going with this, and how it lives on today with exporting jobs, horrible guest worker programs and hiring of illegals for the same means. It's double dipping. The right wing elite beat the drum against illegals to get ignorant racists in a tizzy, for the wrong reasons. While those who know, we know what they're up to.

They WANT them here. Job 1, their job, whatever it is, cheap/no benefits/no worker's comp. Job 2, distract the victims of their policies, the out-of-work racists, and make the tools the scapegoats. They replaced 'welfare moms' as the number one target (once given a black face, though white welfare moms far outnumbered them, always have). As surely as 'Islamofacists' replaced 'Communists'. The GOP, under the movement described in this topic, can't do it any other way. Stripped of the hate-generation machine, they've so little to work with. They're exposed as the pro-corporate (corporate liberals) they are. You can win any debate with them. They work for three people. Owners, upper management, and investors in big corporations. It's that simple. Their job is to do everything they can to get re-elected. Get simps to vote for them based on divisive, hateful issues. Anti-black, anti-gay, anti-women's rights, anti-choice, anti-anyone who doesn't practice religion their way, anti-immigrant, illegal or even otherwise, if the person isn't white.

But I digress. Putting the face of the simpler folk there, who probably aren't that much more numerous on average than up in the north, works. They aren't the driving force, but they can be counted on to get out the vote. It's always who's pulling their strings. Even the corporate-owned govt. has strings pulled at a higher level, because corporations work for what? Money. Who do they work for? Those who control it. They do this hatred stuff globally. Blacks in America, replaced by non-white immigrants and non-white mulsims. But on a global scale also. Scapegoating Jews as the source of all the money-based evil, when only a tiny percentage of them are globalist/right-wing (a smaller number on average, in fact, than non-Jewish whites). They no more speak for all Jews than does Dick Cheney speak for all Americans. But they are held visible enough by ignorant racists, or even those well educated, but distracted and misdirected (ie. David Duke, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). They think Jews are the globalists, when in fact, they are amongst the worst victims of it.

Slavery in America. Racism. Just one tool. Religion is another. Sexual orientation. Even intelligence. Yes. Every time Billow on FAUX calls the well educated 'elite' instead of the very people he works for (Murdoch) and the huge corporations, and the elite bankers/globalists above even them, we see folks get fooled. As you can see, even to the higher than average, well aware folk, found in DU, this whole picture takes a while to explain. Put an ignorant person on the receiving end, they'll be asleep or saying their head hurts, just a few words into it. Much easier to have Rudy Gullianni drum up support against EL-CIA-DUH and advocate the foreign policy I hear most ignorant say on how we should deal with the whole middle east ('Just nuke the place'). Gimme a simple enemy and a simple answer, I don't wanna think.

It explains Bush being so successful pulling funding for education out of where it'll be best used, into useless things like 'vouchers' (that largely don't benefit those who need them, and suggest fixing education by running from 'bad schools in bad areas') and 'No Child Left Behind' which is a failure. Always was intended to be that way. Good old Ted Kennedy's biggest blunder in decades to go along with it. 90% of teachers hate it except for the few high profile ones the right can buy. The solution to that is to paint teachers as the 'enemy'. Their union as Satan. OMG! A union, a group of teachers saying 'we have rights and should make a decent living'. EVIL! Or as Bush's secretary of Education (quite literally an oxymoron) called them once: Terrorists. What a great word to throw around. But the net result is little gained as we fall further behind other countries.

The places with the highest test scores in the world, like Sweeden/Norway. Both countries with a working blend of free-market capitalism and socialism (ie. women get 6 months to a year of maternity leave, paid for, college is free, lowest murder rates in the world, among the highest IQs. 100% single payer medical, dental, vision, long term care. Few if any homeless, or deeply impoverished people. It's cold there, can't grow a cash crop like the south in America, but they manage somehow. They don't have millionaires living there but just saying they are citizens of other countries. Putting 2 people in a shack somewhere with lower/no taxes and calling it the headquarters of a company of tens of thousands. Sending jobs overseas, to make goods they import, hurting their own domestic-based businesses, keeping wages low, minimum wage at true poverty level (not the ridiculously low number we have in America now) so folks are forced to buy at/support globalist companies like WalMart, doing great work for the true elite who get away with all of that.

We don't hear much of those places. Even Michael Moore refrained from putting the part about Norway in 'Sicko' because it was so amazing folks might not believe it. Oh, and what was the last major war those two countries were 100% involved in? Yeah, I can't think of one either. Them 1, globalists 0. Final score. They're filled with people with empathy who understand it could be them in need, so they should provide for those in need. That inability to have that kind of foresight is endemic in the less educated. They see cake, they already had a piece and they are overweight, and the skinny person is barely able to move but trying to get to their piece, but the fat one who already had some is still hungry. They take the piece. It's not my problem, they think. This ties again into the concept of slavery. It's they who suffer, not I. I make the money. So what's wrong with that? If it's not greed like that it's ignorance. It explains why Karl Rove once spoke against lots of people being educated in a speech I wish I saved the link for. They know.

They know a well educated people would say things like this. If Welfare was 3% of the GDP at it's peak (which was during the Regan/Bush 1 era) and was reduced to 1% now, thanks to what Clinton passed (a Democrat, who took the tool they used to divide and conquer away from the GOP) it's not a problem really. We spend more on corporate welfare. They would say that it's wrong to give 8 billion a year in subsidies to oil/coal companies, to help them develop new sources of power. Yeah, right. An oil company is going to work hard to put itself out of business. Would the most powerful country in the world allow a low, long tracked, slow flying plane, after two hyjacked like it hit buildings, to cruise over DC and slam into the Pentagon without one jet in the air and one anti-aircraft gun (and you know they have those there) shooting at it? NOT UNLESS IT WANTED IT TO, at the very least.

Would exit polls, that have never been wrong beyond the margin of error, suddenly be way beyond that margin in how they compare to the results in 2004? Why would computer vote tabulators have built in back-doors, infared remote access ability, and so on, if they were supposed to be 'secure'? Why is it we get a receipt at a Diabold ATM but not at the voting machine? How a few banking families funded both sides and had a role in starting all the major wars of the last 200 years. How they created a small crash to create the Federal Reserve to prevent future crashes, which actually helped create the next big crash (The Great Depression). How the last three assassinated presidents (Lincoln, Garfield and JFK) were the most active of presidents in this time span to speak against the bankers, the central bank concept, and infinite debt-based currency. You get the idea.

Well informed folks won't just lay down and take it, or get distracted over sexuality, abortion, religion, how 'boring' Gore was, John Edward's hair, everything about Dennis Kucinich that makes him less than a marketable image. Even the supposed anti-globalist, 'informed' folk, who back the corporate-liberal Ron Paul (who'd be their wet-dream, no minimum wage, fewer labor laws, less regulation, lower taxation, a boom for corporations and their elite owners, a wolf in a rebel-sheep's clothing). Ignorance and greed are their undoing. "Slowly phase in" eliminting all assistance. Great! The 20 year old quadrapeligic who has no affluent church/family/charity but only Medicaid and SSI to live on will still be a quadrapeligic in poverty 10-20 years after the 'phase in'. Won't he? You loose the Libertarians in an argument at that point, as they have no real anwers. Self-centered, but too naive to realize they won't be the ones who really benefit. It explains why, though Libertarian, he's still Republican. Hey, Storm Front loves him. That brings us back to the link between ignorance, and racism.