ME: Hi!
REPRESENTATIVE GROUP OF LIBERALS (RGOL): Conservatism is fundamentally racist!
ME: Um – beg your pardon?
“RGOL”: Racism oozes from every pore of conservatism!
ME: OK, that’s what we call “bigotry” where I come from, but what the hell, I love a good ad-hominem argument. Do tell!
“RGOL”: Nixon’s “southern strategy” brought all the racists to the GOP!
ME: Er, let’s get back to “the south” in a bit here. You did read my post last week about Jacob Weisberg’s article in that noted racist conservative hangout Slate, that noted there are distinct differences between Northeastern, Southern and Western conservatism, right? How Northeastern conservatism is largely comfortable with big government but with an emphasis on making big government more fiscally sane – think Mitt Romney – and race is largely a non-entity, and in fact part of the roots of Northeastern conservatism are at least partly in the abolition movement? And how Western conservatism, the conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan, is fundamentally libertarian, which means racism is anathema, since libertarian government is utterly color blind, and all real racism – the racism that makes people unequal before the law – is entirely a function of excessive and illegitimate government power, right? Which leaves southern conservatism, which certainly had racists among its adherents, but whose fundamental “racism” is at least partly a matter of framing by, well liberals?
“RGOL”: Of course we did. Now – look at this list of southern conservatives and the racist things they’ve said…
ME: OK, you’re more or less dodging the point here. Can individuals be racist? Certainly. I mean, every human in the world is a “we-ist”, more comfortable around and attuned to people like their own community, and less to to people less like them in ways that are manifested as everything from pointed humor to muted suspicion to blind hatred.
“RGOL”: Right. Like conservatism!
ME: Well, no. Liberals too. I mean, mention, say, a white fundamentalist from Mississippi who resurfaces driveways for a living…
“RGOL”: Hah! Dumb redneck wingnut!
ME: …or an NRA member…
“RGOL”: Bigger gun clinging snake-handling cousin-kissing Jeeeeeebus freak hahahahahahahaha!
ME: ….right, or Sarah Palin…
“RGOL”: Hahahahaha! She went to community college! Trig is Bristol’s baby! She can’t even write and has fake boobs and slept with her deputy mayor and …
ME: …or the Japanese…
“RGOL”: Er…what?
ME: Well, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the godfather of the modern nannystate, did not only order the most singularly racist government action in the past 100 years – the mass internment of American citizens of Japanese descent – but did it after two terms in which he supported California’s deeply racist anti-Japanese immigration laws.
“RGOL”: …
ME: OK, fine, it was seventy years ago. Still, your entire case that “conservatism oozes racism” seems to be based on 1) a bunch of anecdotal stories of Republicans who said racist things 2) a bunch of memes from Media Matters and the like, that largely yank statements by the likes of Rush Limbaugh so far out of context you’re getting into borderline defamation, and 3) framing conservative issues as fundamentally racist.
To which I reply 1) Why does Robert Byrd never make it into those lists, 2) Gosh, a liberal flak group waterboarding context, notify the media, and 3) when your entire argument is designed to try to misleadingly frame your opponent as something evil – and we all agree that racism is a bad thing, right? – then you are committing a crime against truth!
“RGOL”: What are you talking about?
ME: For example, every time a conservative talks about strengthening the Tenth Amendment, some idiot lefty will come back with “That sounds like “states rights”, which was once used to defend slavery.
“RGOL”: Right! Conservatism supports slavery!
ME: {{facepalm}} No. No, we are pretty much the opposite extreme; we are the party of individual self-determination. And, by the way, it is a fact that Jim Crow after 1900 was largely a government initiative that overrode the free market; that in most southern states, the business community – which are stereotypically conservative, right?…
“RGOL”: Bosses! Bosses!
ME: …right. They largely opposed Jim Crow, since Jim Crow took anywhere from 10 to 50% out of their markets!
“RGOL”: But the southerners were racists! And Nixon brought them into the GOP!
ME: Well, no and yes and no. The “Southern Strategy” sought votes from southerners who were upset over a variety of things – federal intrusions into property rights and free association as a matter of principle, the size and growth of government, and the federalization of an awful lot of things that had always been left to the states. And yes, there were no doubt some among ’em that were upset that the Feds poked their nose into race relations – because a racist citizen’s vote counts just as much as yours does. Which galls the crap out of me when I see some of those anti-semitic filth at left-leaning demonstrations, by the way – but I digress. The framing of all southern conservatives’ flight to the GOP as race-related has become part of the conventional wisdom, to the extent that all defenses of the thesis become tautological. Just watch: “The southern strategy was not primarily about race”.
“RGOL”: But the southern strategy was racist because it brought racist southerners into the party…
ME: Thanks. I rest my case.
“RGOL”: …um…
ME: Move along.
“RGOL”: Yeah? Well…what about Arizona?
ME: Jeez. More framing. The Arizona law – which most Americans support, in its final form – is about securing our borders. That is one of the missions of government, no?
“RGOL”: But it’s racist!
ME: Huh? Let me ask you something; if Minnesota were awash in Canadians sneaking across the border, and illegal Canadian immigration were forcing down American wages, and if in coming here they rejected American culture and upheld Canadian culture with their back-bacon and hockey-worship and mass drunkenness, and if the Canadian Army were charging across the border to help out Canadian drug smugglers and killing people on our side of the border, that “illegal” Gordon Fitzpatrick wouldn’t replace the “illegal” Juan Jimenez as the boogeyman du jour?
“RGOL”: But that’s just dumb.
ME: What if our hypothetical Gordon Fitzpatrick was pro-charter schools and anti-card-check?
“RGOL”: Then he’d be racist and he’d hate children…
ME: Er, yeah. Look – do our laws mean anything, or do they not? Are we a sovereign nation, or are we not?
“RGOL”: Er…huh?
ME: …
“RGOL”: You are obviously a racist.
ME: Riiiiight.
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