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.
Don’t forget Woodrow Wilson, the granddady of American Progressivism was an ardent racist and segregationist. I don’t think he’d have much success in today’s GOP.
and don’t forget Woodrow Wilson’s interment camps in operation from 1917 – 1918 (see: Hot Springs, North Carolina ) these camps were a small operation, about 100k, but certainly emblematic of Wilsonian Democracy.
How’s that again?
I think this actually went:
Mitch: “There are no racists on the right.”
ROGL: “How’s that again?”
Mitch: “The left is racist, we’re not!”
ROGL: ROFLMAO
Mitch: “Oh, yeah?”
ROGL: “Yes, Reagan opposed the civil rights act, Limbaugh, Coulter, Knotts, Blair – and a HOST of others have made racist remarks, many GOP politicians have made racist remarks SINCE Obama’s election.”
Mitch: “Those are the exception, and you took Limbaugh out of context on one comment.”
ROGL: “ROFLMAO, ok, sure Mitch. What about the rest of the FACTUAL reflections of comments by right wing voices.”
Mitch: “Exceptions… err” (Crickets)
ROGL: “Helloooooo, Mitch???”
Mitch: “I’m going back to my blog!”
Mitch writes a fictional, distortion of the realities and complains about broad, sweeping generalities AND the taking of small acts to reflect the larger group.
THEN, Mitch says that Anti-Semitism is a key tenent of the American Left.
(imho) Perhaps fiction and hypocrisy work here, but you ducked the questions Mitch.
I think this actually went: Mitch: “There are no racists on the right.”
Nope. I never said any such thing.
I did say that I have never personally met a significant politically-active conservative who made any form of racist point of view known to me in any way shape or form.
Significant difference, no?
But the code words, Mitch, the code words!
Reagan opposed the civil rights act
I wasn’t aware Reagan was in Congress in 1964. Please enlighten.
But since you’re on the subject – Barry Goldwater voted against it. He had also spent years fighting for racial equality before the law. He opposed the CRA for the same reason Rand Paul got pilloried a few weeks ago: because it violated the principle of Free Association. Which it did, and still does.
Mitch says that Anti-Semitism is a key tenent of the American Left.
No, Mitch did not. Go back and re-read that bit – or read it thoroughly for the first time. I said no such thing – again. Your reading comprehension continues to fail you.
Your thesis is that conservatism is fundamentally racist. I’m shredding that thesis. That’s really all that’s going on here.
Oh and Woodrow Wilson was an open supporter, along with Margaret Sanger and H. G. Wells of the Eugenics movement in the U.S. – can’t get much more liberal than that.
Reagan opposed the civil rights act
What I said above. But also – since you and DG are so fond of playing the citation game, please come up with a non-whackdoodle source that not only supports that statement, but gives some political and ethical context to the statement, assuming you can find one.
You might learn something.
Oh, yeah:
hypocrisy
You do like throwing that word around, don’t you?
So how am I a “hypocrite?” To what moral standard am I holding others that I’m not holding myself? Because that’s hypocrisy. You seem to be under the impression that it means “I think you’re wrong about something”.
It’s not!
Reagan was against making MLK day a national holiday. What more evidence do you need?
Most of the people who use support of the CRA as some sort of litmus test have no problem with racially gerrymandered congressional districts. They like the idea of the State determining whose race does and does not qualify them for a certain political office.
I think they wish the South would secede from the union again so Uncle Sam could bomb it.
“Mitch says that Anti-Semitism is a key tenent of the American Left.”
No, Mitch did not.
But I will. Look up history of SS St Louis. Also, just like there were Japanese interment camps, there were Jewish internment camps as well. Look up Fort Ontario sometime. History’s a beeyatch, ain’t she?
RGOL:
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Reagan was against making MLK day a national holiday. What more evidence do you need?
And then he signed it into law. Go figure.
Same old story: Peev’s vapid, asinine retorts get rhetorically bitch-slapped and he scatters away like a cockroach.
Not that I should expect otherwise.
“I’m going back to my blog!”
Er, Pen? Are you sure that’s a tack you want to take?
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Here’s a good example of the reactionary way that liberals think about race:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13kristof.html?ref=nicholasdkristof
Nic Kristof’s latest column.
Naturally, since Kristof is a prize winning journalist, he prefers dishonest haranguing to simply telling his readers the facts and allowing them to make up their own mind. In the article he compares two black guys with the same name, one who ended up a Rhodes scholar and one who ended in prison for murder.
What do I mean by dishonesty? Of the less fortunate man Kristof writes:
His father, a radio and television journalist, died of a virus after a hospital emergency room — seeing only a disoriented, disheveled black man — misdiagnosed him and sent him home to get “more sleep,” Mr. Moore writes.
Like a disoriented, disheveled white guy’s never been turned away from the ER without receiving proper care? This is anecdote, not evidence.
“His mother was earning a college degree at Johns Hopkins — which probably would have provided the family a ladder to the middle class — when Reagan-era budget cuts terminated her financial aid and forced her to drop out.”
Reagan Era budget cuts? We know how viciously Reagan turned back the clock on social spending. Oh, wait, that didn’t happen. Nice way to not-so-subtly cast Reagan as making a murderer out of a regular guy who just wanted to enter the middle class. Because of the damn budget cuts! She was going to Johns Hopkins and no other college would admit a black woman with a record like that, lol!
Kristof is a hack. Change the names and dates, and there is nothing in this column that couldn’t have been written by an NYT columnist 40 years ago.
Margaret Sanger … can’t get much more liberal than that.
Being anti-abortion is liberal now?
“Margaret Sanger … can’t get much more liberal than that.”
Being anti-abortion is liberal now?
So…you’re implying Margaret Sanger was anti-abortion?
That comment reaches levels of peevishness that were previously assumed to be unattainable.
“Margaret Sanger … can’t get much more liberal than that.
Being anti-abortion is liberal now?”
you don’t have a clue who Margaret Sanger was do you?
Margaret Sanger would have pulled Trig from Sarah Palin’s womb & bashed his brains out.
But now Peevee has replicated into three, just like a good cockroach would. The other two atheists are a dog and a “priest”.
What else would you call someone that opposes the fact that we are endowed by our CREATOR…
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I was well endowed by our creator.
Modesty, Terry, modesty. Some words are hurtful to others.
Being anti-abortion is liberal now?
Seriously? Anti-abortion? Please read something, anything about Sanger.
Now boys, technically the Stooge is correct.
” It is apparent that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide.” – Margaret Sanger
But she did found Planned Parenthood, which “Progressives” took over and turned into a billion dollar baby-killing industry.
“Reagan was against making MLK day a national holiday. What more evidence do you need?”
I was against giving the gov’t employees another paid day off. Are you saying I am a racist?
Woodrow Wilson was a vicious racist who forced African-Americans out of federal jobs. He had pictures taken of all fed’l employees so they knew which ones had dark skin, and therefore needed to go. He also locked up political prisons (was it Debs for one?). Harding ended Wilson’s racist policies and released Wilsons political prisoners.
first off being anti-abortion was not the focus of Margaret Sanger’s life and work and is not, as the stooge incorrectly implies, the bedrock definition of a liberal.
Margaret sanger was deeply concerned with society at large and government in particular using the best available scientifically valid evidence to shape the future of the human race. In 1915-1939 that best science was Darwinism and eugenics. In her own words:
“The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics…. We are convinced that racial regeneration, like individual regeneration, must come ‘from within.'”
” We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother… Only upon a free, self-determining motherhood can rest any unshakable structure of racial betterment.”
“It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. Herein lies the key of civilization. For upon the foundation of an enlightened and voluntary motherhood shall a future civilization emerge.” Margaret Sanger – from What Every Boy and Girl Should Know, 1915
In modern times:
“I will restore the basic principle that government decisions should be based on the best- available, scientifically-valid evidence…” – Obama 2008
“RGOL”
That’s the sound Peevee, Deegee and Ayebee make when they pass Victory gin from mouth to mouth.
I like being told that I know nothing about something by people who clearly have no clue.
Thank you, Kermit, for at least knowing the basics.
Kel, if you don’t believe scientific evidence is good, what do you base decisions on?
I like being told that I know nothing about something by people who clearly have no clue.
You get used to it.
So OK – Sanger is more complicated than the conventional story…
… but what we end up with was this: Sanger was a eugenics buff and a corrosive racist – who wanted to see fewer abortions.
Damnation by faint praise?
DiscordianStooj said:
“Kel, if you don’t believe scientific evidence is good, what do you base decisions on?”
Can this be interpreted as a vote for eugenics?
I enjoy being told “science good, fire bad” by people who also simply want to keep believing what they now believe. :-/
Mitch:
“the business community . . . largely opposed Jim Crow”
No they didn’t
http://crdl.usg.edu/cgi/crdl?action=retrieve;rset=001;recno=1;format=_video
“The clip begins by showing a sign for the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. Shelton declares that while the Chamber of Commerce feels the federal government should not legislate public accommodations, the Chamber continues to urge its members “soliciting businesses from the general public to do so without regard to race, creed, or color.”
So even in the famous city “too busy to hate”, the Chamber opposed the Civil Rights Act.
More generally:
http://www.stanford.edu/~write/ParadoxR.pdf
“But here we have a case in which regional businesses and businessmen, with few exceptions, supported segregation and opposed state and national efforts at racial integration”
Yet again trying to make the facts fit your theory.
So wait, Rick – your first quote reinforces my point. I can’t watch the clip just yet, but I”m going to suspect it does, too.
And I neither know nor care about “regional businessmen”, I’m referring to locals. Atlanta’s streetcar company and the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce (IIRC) both opposed Jim Crow laws; they interfered with business.
Government passed Jim Crow laws – because Government, having a monopoly on power, is the only party that can actually enforce legal discrimination.
Yet again, Rick, trying to make facts fit your theory, condescending to me, and stepping in it.
Mitch:
How does opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 count as opposing Jim Crow?
“Government. . . is the only party that can actually enforce legal discrimination.” And by opposing the 1964 CRA the business community said it was OK to use police power to remove people from a private business if the owner did not like their skin color.
You’re changing the subject, Rick.
Many people – Barry Goldwater being a great example – fought endlessly for equality, but opposed the CRA because it gave government the power to veto an individual’s free association.
As to your second graf, Rick – please. Obama and Kelliher’s disintegration seems to be making your normally-sloppy game even worse.
a) Stop equating “opposing CRA” to “opposing equality”. Not necessarily the same thing – as we’ve seen w/Goldwater, Rand Paul.
b) Funny how you blithely miss your own logical inconsistency; why would police have “power” to remove ppl for their skin color? Because government grants it! Why would local trespass and nuisacne laws not suffice, provided they passed the Fourteenth Amendment? Be careful with that answer, Rick – I can already see the trap you’ll walk into.
c) So you’re saying that a black businessman must not have the ability to eject white racists from his own business?
d) So who would actually patronize a business that discriminates? I wouldn’t – but it’s interesting to note that you apparently need government to tell you to eschew racist businesses. Odd.
RickDFL, you believe that the government should treat people differently because of their race.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment14/
Crawl back into your hole, racist.
The Voting Right Act to liberals means the government will racially skew the electors to suit their desires:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100615/ap_on_el_st_lo/us_voting_rights_election
Racist scum bags.
Can this be interpreted as a vote for eugenics?
Only if you see eugenics as science-based. Which it isn’t.
science good/fire bad
Fire is pretty good too. Don’t know many people who think otherwise.
DiscordianStooj said:
“Only if you see eugenics as science-based. Which it isn’t.”
Ah, just like Anthropomorphic Global Warming.
“Fire is pretty good too. Don’t know many people who think otherwise”
[matching-obtuseness]So no fire fighters, burn victims, insurance company employees?[/]
Which it isn’t
Hindsight is cool. There were plenty, Sanger included, who believed it was. Or, more accurately, believed it was social engineering – and engineering is nothing but applied science.
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