Reaction to Blogger's "Republican's Freed the Slaves..."
Granted that Woodrow Wilson turned a blind eye to the South were he to win election, he is no more a racist than Lyndon Johnson who did turn a good eye, which led to the fracture of the solid south for the Democratic Party. Woodrow Wilson capitalized on the Republican split between the liberal wing and the conservatives leading to Teddy Roosevelt’s third party based on “New Nationalism” — a strong central government steeped in social legislation — which ironically later became the battle cry for the New Deal. But the notorious Brownsville incident of 1906 charging black soldiers with killing one white man. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Roosevelt discharged all 167 soldiers without honor — hardly the sentiment of a man sympathetic to blacks in the south. Not until 1972 was Roosevelt’s ruling overturned.
Still, Wardell is correct that the Republicans before and after the Civil War were the champions of the blacks. Theodore Roosevelt, and following, Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were in the main pre-occupied with war, foreign affairs and corporate corruption to concern themselves over egregious behavior in the south.
Even FDR could not concern himself with the ills of the south because he needed a solid south to embody a mandate for economic change to end the Depression. Truman edged into the south by acknowledging equal rights for the black man in the armed service and almost cost him the election. It took the great liberal Republican Earl Warren as Chief Justice to reject the separate but equal clause in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring unconstitutional the separation of public-school children according to race.
This eventually led to Nixon’s notorious “southern strategy” that was actually originated by Wilson and FDR, but in a far less sophisticated south. The Republicans at the time never realized their traditional identity would be in jeopardy, for by then the south was changing as an increasing number of whites from the north settled in and was absorbed by the revival of the southern gentry. So, too, was the white trash no longer trashy thanks to Democratic legislation. As a result, the south had, in the end, won the Civil War by converting the cosmopolitan liberal wing of the Republican Party to endorse the provincialism of modern confederates still grudgingly adamant toward centralized governance.
It is a bit of a stretch to lump all northern Democrats with the statement: “90% of the African Americans side with the party that literally fought to the death to keep them enslaved.” Moreover, interpreting this to suggest that modern Democrats abandoned white power for, I suppose, black [“downtrodden’] in order to produce a slave mentality for those who are thankful for the party’s assistance to make something of themselves is another stretch of the blogger’s logic, or as blogger Wahkonta Anathema would say, using the “broad brush.” The fact is the Democrats learned from sensitive liberals of old on both sides to forge a more caring government by recognizing the insidious fact that uncontrollable, deregulated laissez-faire is as old as the hills and can no longer be tolerated in modernity where so many millions are hurting from profiteers lobbying in behalf of insensitive oligarchies. Blogger Jeblackstar commented that in today’s terms Lincoln would be a Democrat.
Contrary to Wardell’s implication that Republicans are the freedom party that does not subject its followers to enslavement because it champions enlightened citizens who can figure out for themselves how best to make a living, the truth is that it is rare that an average Joe can make the grade in an interdependent society that is under threat of eroding opportunity for the sake of the grasping few.
Without a strong, but sensitive sentinel of governing, we have, as an illustration, a hike of 30% in Wall Street broker bonuses in contrast to 0.5% increase in the hourly wage, and, thanks to Bush’s tax-cuts, high-end sales increase, such as Tiffany at 16%, dwarfing Wal-mart’s 3.9%. The trickle down pipe is clogged. It is the Republicans who have made a 180◦ turn.
