From my friend Greg Campbell: To liberals and progressives, facts are often inconvenient things. They would like nothing more than to find proof that the right is racist. We hear constantly that the Tea Party is racist, that Republicans are racist, that everybody except liberals are racists. But through all of the blustering about race in American coming from the left, what we have not heard is evidence that the right is racist. The leftist media mainly relies on inflammatory (and sometimes slanderous) commentaries regarding race in America as substitutions for facts. When it comes to the issue of race in America, facts are burdensome things that seem to get in the way of their contrived narratives. The L.A. Times, a bastion of left-wing media bias, has recently come out to paint Republicans in an unflattering light as having been on the wrong side of history regarding the Civil Rights Movement. The L.A. Times, discussing the fiftieth anniversary celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, wrote: “Republican politicians invited to the event passed on the high-profile platform to promote their vision of the civil rights landscape and their effort to reach out to black voters. House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio chose to speak at a congressional ceremony last month instead, spokesman Brendan Buck said. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia had previously scheduled events in North Dakota and Ohio, an aide said.Former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush could not attend for health reasons, their spokesmen said. The absence of even a gesture of bipartisanship was a reminder of the enduring political legacy of the civil rights battles. Since Democrats led the passage of civil rights legislation that marchers pushed for in 1963, Republicans have struggled to recover with black voters, leaving a stark racial divide in American politics." The piece co-written by three journalists, Kathleen Hennessey, Richard Simon, and Alexei Koseff, none of whom caught the glaring historical inaccuracy. Though Democrats have, in recent decades, come to be known for their relationship with the black community, the Democrats of yesteryear were largely responsible for the segregationist policies that serve as a black mark on this nation’s history. It was the Democratic Party that was anti-abolitionist before, during and after the Civil War. It was the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, that championed abolition. Nearly a century later, it was the Democratic Party that fought against Civil Rights legislation. It was Democrat Strom Thurmond who ran as a “Dixiecrat” (States Rights Democratic Party) to oppose integration and later mounted the longest filibuster in Senate history by speaking for 24 hours in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. In fact, many Americans are unaware that from 1959 to 2010, a former official for the Ku Klux Klan served as a Democratic Senator. West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd served as a leader for his KKK chapter before joining the Senate as a Democrat for West Virginia. More directly, however, is the question, “What political party was Dr. King truly protesting?” If Dr. King demanded a change in the status quo in 1963, it most definitely would have been a departure from the policies of Democrats. At the time of King’s speech, the 87th Congress was controlled by democrats 64-36 in the Senate and 262-175 in the House. The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. It seems, during this period of reflection, that facts don’t matter. The history of Democratic opposition to the Civil Rights Movement is irrelevant to biased media outlets that would prefer to posture as if Republicans fought, and continue to fight, against the black community. However, even today, we can witness the shocking partisan behavior by liberals who preach tolerance, but seldom practice it. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, a staunch conservative and the only black senator in the nation, was not invited to speak at the MLK celebration.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Sep 2013 01:59:00 +0000
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