MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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The Marriage of Libertarians and Racists
By A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 06/28/2013 - 7:58am |In the U.S. news media, there is often a distinction made between the racist Right, which emerged from the struggle to maintain slavery and segregation, and the “small-government” Right, which supposedly represents a respectable conservatism focused on the libertarian ideals of personal freedom and free-market principles.
But the reality is that both of these major branches of the American Right grew from the same political trunk, i.e., the South’s fear that a strong federal government would intrude on the practices of slavery and, later, segregation. And, throughout U.S. history, those two branches of the Right have been mutually supportive.
URL:
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/06/27/the-marriage-of-libertarians-and-racists/
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Alot of these newly converted libertarians of the Rand Paul variety are so ideologically brainwashed they have no idea that the talk of "state's rights" and the obsessive hatred of Abraham Lincoln is totally race based. Libertarianism is not based on reality - alot of people involved in don't live in reality and so it's know surprise that many libertarians will be cluelessly unaware of what they really are supporting.
by Orion on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 5:51am
Sigh - I should know better, but basically if you look at history through a prism you're likely to see those colors.
There was much more to states' rights than slavery. Hamilton wanted the central government strong because he thought Britain's monarchy the best and didn't think there should be any states at all - rather at odds with the sentiment of many newly independent colonists.
There were revolts such as Shay's Rebellion in the north (Massachussetts) that were anything but slavery, though they were against the heavy hand of centralized government. They were about bankers and the better-connected folks in the big city abusing farmers, the result being a huge debt load. Instead of providing debt relief, the state government went out confiscating land and putting people in prison. It was our classic 1% vs. 99% equation - one that came to play later such as when the federal government used tax revenue to fund expanding railroads and canals in the north while leaving the south with poor infrastructure. (e.g. the problems in the 1860's left the federal government free in 1863 to finance the intercontinental railroad that bypassed the south - from Iowa just south of Chicago's latitude).
This country mouse vs. city mouse conflict is as old as cities themselves. But it's not the only source of states' rights. The original colonies had very different populations, religious majorities and other issues. Roger Williams set up Rhode Island after being kicked out of Massachussetts. William Penn set up Pennsylvania based on more religious freedom. Highland and lowland Virginia differed on more than slavery - ways of life in the hills were greatly different from the farming of the lowlands. Fishing & whaling communities in Massachussetts were quite different from the much more landlocked New Hampshire or New York, while the until-1760's French Vermont was quite different from German & Dutch in Pennsylvania. These days, Alaska and Montana's needs differ quite a bit from Texas and California's, or Florida's vastly split electoral makeup.
So while the states rights' issue could certainly be used to advance slavery issues, and it was, there are many reasons that still exist were local domain decision-making is a better fit than one-size-fits-all rule from Washington. States' rights has allowed the steady development of marriage equality for gays and lesbians. It's allowed the first medical marijuana and now legalized marijuana. It lets California implement stricter environmental controls than the federal governments. It lets Elliot Spitzer come down harder on Wall Street cheats than the SEC and other federal regulators.
I think - from experience - that this conflating racism with southern nostalgia & regional pride is a recent outgrowth of the conservative movement - perhaps partly from Reagan & Goldwater, perhaps from the Gingrich revolution & Lee Atwater, not sure where all. In the 60's in the south I don't recall any linking of the flag and slavery, any "rebel yell" being tied to nostalgia for slavery. It was about being independent, being left alone, being a "Free Bird", being tough as nails and willing to fight back. There was respect for rural living, and some respect for back-to-the-land (though redneck southern sheriffs arresting & shaving southern eco-conscious hippies' hair didn't help southern unity).
So I think another attempt to narrow states' rights into only a slavery issue is rather flawed from the get-go, especially when non-southerners like Sarah Palin & Glenn Beck get lumped into the mix as somehow representing the new racist libertarian south.
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 9:39am
Thanks for that new-to-me perspective. Wish it had occurred to me. It should have because it reminds me of what FDR said about having 48 laboratories to experiment with different ideas. Of course, the advent of mass media, the cold war and total information awareness pretty much ended that but as you show, there are vestiges remaining.
by EmmaZahn on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 10:52am
Thanks for your input. Always glad to see your perspective and almost always find it valuable.
I agree that issues of slavery don’t explain everything when it comes to broader issues of states rights and how they are viewed today, but it seems that a fair case was made that slavery was an economic issue that played a big part in setting up the tension between adherents of big gov versus small. And, as you say, that tension as well as the diverse actions coming from different states attempting to deal with it has had some benefits. The particulars of slavery could be ignored and discussion of racism avoided if the the question was just framed more abstractly as the tension created by those wanting to protect different economic structures existing in different geographical areas. The early actions are still affecting our present. Racism still exists, [It always will, forever, no matter what] slavery required racist attitudes and beliefs, slavery's protection was attempted under the guise of states rights, and states rights can still today give a racist a scaffolding to attach their racist motives, and thus the racist wheel has an axle on which to turn even if that axle supports a bigger load of some value.
You defend states rights? You must be a racist, definitively revealed at last.[ I'm confident that you will see that last sentence as snark bs but just in case some others don't ...]
It does seem to me that the article gave some valuable insights as to the stated philosophies tweaked by personal motives of various members of the ‘founding fathers’ club at the time when the clay of our unformed government was being squeezed and pushed this way and that in an attempt to give it a workable form. What they came up with can look quite different from one angle or another.
I am not one to expect perfection in any human or in anything created by humans and our Constitution is an example, IMO. My sweeping conclusion which would likely not stand up on every point of contention is that we are probably lucky that Jefferson was out of the country when the Constitution was written and lucky again that he returned soon enough to get the Bill of Rights passed while much of the original scaffolding was still in flux. Then politics as usual proceeded, as usual. Protection of states rights seems to have a much stronger, much more involved constituency that does protection of the Bill of Rights. I'd like to see that balance shift a bit.
Clay Jenkinson has a prism that shows Jefferson shinning always in hallowed colors.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 12:02pm
Aside from slavery & civil rights, were there any issues the federal government was way ahead of the states and had to educate or discipline them?
And is this not really a shifting of values from "more enlightened states" (YMMV) to the remainder?
Below's a map of states with women's rights before the amendment passed, green states having full suffrage. Would have been interesting for the green states to invade the red states to save their downtrodden sisters.
More seriously, we seem to ignore the sometimes tough dynamic between states and federal that makes our system interesting - whether ideal or in need of change. It's doubtful that the Founding Fathers saw the US as emerging as a global power, so the need for a strong centralized voice was probably less (maybe Hamilton was an exception). The growth of the US tended to give a "best of breed" set of rules to new states even as older states were recalcitrant to change. Likely a good deal of haves vs. have-nots also prevailed with new states, where it's easier to manipulate laws for a sparsely populated region all dependent on a single employer like a railroad or banker or ranch.
What the demonization of Jefferson and anointment of Hamilton seems to ignore is that many (most?) colonialists and settlers of any type during this age were fleeing the tyranny of European monarchs and dictators, that their prime driver was to be left alone, to self-organize, to have some freedom to do what was unacceptable on the continent.
Sure, Jefferson was de facto a racist and hypocrite for not freeing his slaves, etc. But the lessons from the French Reign of Terror (oppression by the raving masses) don't really justify faith in centralization alone as referenced here:
A fanatic can be an isolated lunatic, a states' rights proponent or the head of one of the parties in Congress.
The issue of racism in terms of modern politics is more complex. It's often something of a litmus test, or kind of a braggart's bravado in a boy's club - an ornament rather than a belief, tied in with a half dozen behaviors to be in with the in-crowd. Just as Hamilton turned more religious to counter the returned atheism/deism of Jefferson (his arch-rival), modern politicians and adherents put on all the trappings of their supposed stance on the political spectrum, which now runs mostly A-B rather than A-Z. Tough Republicans hold tough positions on race and social issues - the Marie Antoinette position. What do they really think? Hard to tell.
So analyzing states rights on a partially aritificial posture of convenience is difficult, unless you want to include the idea that all these constructs - centralized government, state federalism, communes, etc. - can be hijacked.
Instead, folks seem to want to prove states' rights as flawed, so focus on its greatest failure. Of course we have tons more greatest failures of a strong centralized state, such as Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward, the mistreatment of large minorities or majorities in countries like Burma or South Africa, as well as our current government's efforts to spy electronically on all of us, but those arguments never seem to appear in the discussion - we turn parochial and only want to talk about our local modern politicians, and not the more general examples we have at hand.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 06/30/2013 - 2:48am
by rmrd0000 on Sun, 06/30/2013 - 10:00am
Even on a city level, we see physical assault. NYC Mayor Bloomberg thinks that too many Whites and too few Blacks are being stopped by "Stop and Frisk".
87% of the Stops are Black and Latino. Only 9% are White.
by rmrd0000 on Sun, 06/30/2013 - 11:29am
Sticking with the marijuana example, what is the compelling reason for not allowing states themselves to decide whether marijuana should be legal, medical marijuana should be allowed, etc.?
If you're for legalization, states' rights is good at this point - until the feds decide to legalize it, at which point states rights will be bad - allowing slow states to continue criminalizing it. The choice can be very arbitrary. As long as the Supreme Court is down with Roe v Wade, states rights is bad for abortion. As soon as the Court overturns, states rights will be the path back to abortion rights.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 06/30/2013 - 1:44pm
Slavery was a prime reason for Secession. States' Rights became more an issue after the Civil War. Jim Crow laws loom large as a result of States Rights. Because a small segment of society determined what was"right" , people suffered. The fight today as we see action against women in Texas and the open voter suppression in North Carolina both dominated by a GOP legislature, we see the tyranny of States' Rights under certain conditions
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 12:21pm
We are on the eve of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. We have seen the Supreme Court gut the Voting Rights Act. The VRA was said to reflect 40 year old data despite 15K pages of data reviewed before the Act was renewed in 2006. From the questioning we knew Scalia viewed Blacks being able to vote as an entitlement. The states of the Confederacy were the major targets of Pre-clearance required under the VRA. Once SCOTUS gutted the Act Texas and North Carolina couldn't wait to put laws in effect to suppress minority votes.
The South continues to write is own legacy.we have a court in Florida that may rule that it is OK to rule that killing an unarmed Black male teen is legal. We have the Paula Deen nonsense. Deen fantasized a Negroes in White tuxedos wedding that she said came from her Southern upbringing. She told of her great-grandfather's suicide because he could not deal with life without slaves. People form opinions about the South because they see Southern states being the first to rush to suppress Black votes. We hear a prominent Southern businesswoman telling us the impact her Southern upbringing has had.we don't make up the stories.Southerners create the story.
Some Southerners need to be soothed by pointing out problems in the North. So to ease their pain, I will point to the fury over "Stop and Frisk" in NYC and the fact that forced busing in Boston back in the day did not go over well with Whites. We don't sugar coat either event.the racism is duly noted.
When there is an attempt to gloss over events, it is called out. There were areas in Brooklyn that had to get clearance under the VRA. There were areas in Wisconsin that were under the same order. But it was the states of the Confederacy that wee the source of the bulk of the problem. SCOTUS have given them a blank check to go back to the Fifties and Sixties.
C-SPAN will have a broadcast tomorrow on the Battle of Gettysburg. The Civil War was a triumph, not a tragedy.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 10:59am
A no-lose fix for the Voting Rights Act - Salon.com:
Make Section 4 -- and federal pre-clearance of changes in electoral laws -- apply to all 50 states
by EmmaZahn on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 12:25pm
The GOP House is going to have problems with an Immigration bill. I think the the party as a whole is glad that their state legislatures will be able to do more voter suppression and gerrymandering to guarantee Republican seats.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 12:41pm
Given that the Democratic response to the Republican's Southern Strategy was to abandon the South to its tender mercies, they have only themselves to blame for being gerrymandered to oblivion.
You can't vote for a Democrat if there are none to vote for!
There is an unexpected open Senate seat in Georgia next year and just this past week it was revealed that its Democratic party has a whopping $15,000 in the bank. Thanks so much DSCC.
by EmmaZahn on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 1:04pm
If I understand correctly Chambliss announced that he wouldn't be running in January. This insured that the Democrats would have a limited amount of time to gear up. Max Cleland May decide to run again or possibly Sam Nunn's daughter.
The Senate seat issue does not address the issue of gerrymandering that gives the GOP many guaranteed seats. How do you see Section 4 revision happening in the real world?
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 1:20pm
I don't. What's that saying? "Success is preparation meeting opportunity." Democrats are simply not prepared to take the country back. They seriously screwed up abandoning the South. Guess they did not expect domestic migration patterns to nullify their 'whistling past Dixie' strategy. And they sure should have fought the 2010 midterms harder. The Republicans recognized that whoever won those at state level would be the ones gerrymandering the new census. Did the Democrats?
----
About the Senate seat, I don't think Max would win. Michelle Nunn may have a chance riding on on Sam's coat tails and she could probably fund her campaigns from the war chest he retired with, if it still exists and if that is legal. If not, he has some wealthy friends that could kick in more than a few bucks.
But what about challenging some House seats outside the comfortably gerrymandered Atlanta. They probably would not win but might reestablish a presence for future elections.
by EmmaZahn on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 1:42pm
This is getting circular. You point to an article on how to fix Section 4 then suggest it wouldn't pass given the current structure of the House.from a Presidential standpoint, It was taken as a given that a Southerner was needed on the ticket to win the Presidency, Obama/Biden proved that you didn't need to go South for a candidate and theft you could win without the South. Romney/Ryan also abandoned the Southern candidate format.
You are correct that Democrats should make Republicans defend all 50 states. This is a good tactic for 2014 and beyond. Again I do not see anything that suggests that the current Congress is capable of dealing with fixing Section 4. I see no Congressional solution.
people are gearing up for state by state battles which is what the Federalist Society member of SCOTUS and Republicans at all levels wanted. The battles will start in the old Confederacy and progress to Republican legislatures in the rest off the country.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 1:58pm
The title, America’s Stolen Narrative, sounds like an apt description of the book.
Whenever the cries for or against States' Rights inevitably resurface. I always wonder if we would be engaged in the American Civil War 3.0 if in 1.0 the response were framed straight up as versus Individual Rights instead of as versus slavery.
As unpleasant as it is to think about, slaves were treated as livestock. Would emphasizing the question that helped end slavery in Britain, "Am I not a man and a brother?", have been more effective and beneficial long term than abolitionist pap like Uncle Tom's Cabin
I like feeling that the Federal government has my individual rights back should my State overstep its bounds and infringe them but the reverse also applies.
Wish we would spend more time working out the boundaries and limits of individual versus state (or federal) rights and less rehashing old arguments. It is way past time to end the Civil War.
by EmmaZahn on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 12:00pm
It seems to me that the GOP has gotten bat-feces crazy in the era of. Black President. The Federalist Society judges on SCOTUS just gutted the VRA. Multiple states are rushing to suppress votes by chasing non-existent voter fraud. Drug sentences fall more harshly on minorities The Texas legislature will attempt to gerrymander Wendy Davis' district out of existence. So who has to disarm for us to stop fighting the Civil War?
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 12:29pm
"It seems to me that the GOP has gotten bat-feces crazy in the era of. Black President.
Yes, it has. I have written before that a successful Obama presidency would effectively neutralize its Southern Strategy so I expected obstructionist behavior, just not the levels it has reached. I just wish more people on the left would follow Obama's lead and ignore it as much as possible and just keep on doing the best they can to make his presidency a success even if it means revisiting and even restructuring old rules new ways.
by EmmaZahn on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 1:00pm
How do you ignore active voter suppression? If you don't get to vote you have no impact on who represents you. If the GOP House votes as a block to obstruct legislation, how do you reconstruct Section 4? I'm unclear what you see as the solution .
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 1:09pm
Did you read the Lind article I linked to above?
Oh, and get a better Democratic team for sales/marketing.
by EmmaZahn on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 1:20pm
I read the article. I don't see the current GOP house agreeing on anything proposed.I use Immigration reform as the basis for my skepticism.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 1:41pm
Okay, so the current GOP house would not agree. But you still have to float the idea. Get it out there as the fairest way to assure voting rights for EVERYONE - not just blacks. Everyone gets gerrymandered but not many know why. I've been in a different district for just about every federal election in the past 20 years and the farthest I moved is two miles. That's about 40 city blocks but with way less density. We're more populous now than ever at ~300/sq mi.
If there is one takeaway from this SCOTUS session, it is that desperately clinging to solutions to old problems is not working. Better to get busy working on solutions to new problems.
by EmmaZahn on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 1:56pm
See my response above. The VRA decision was disappointing, but not unexpected. State organizations will fight back. There was a plan in place if the Fisher case went South as well.
The bottom line is that the solution offered in Salon is not going to happen anytime soon. The problem is the GOP,not the Democrats.The country wanted background checks for guns.The republicans said no. The country wants immigration reform, the Republicans will likely say no to that as well. Republican obstruction cannot be under estimated
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 2:04pm
Why would you expect to get back in one election what you lost over a period of 40 years?
The Southern Strategy was not just about the Presidency, it was also about turning the Solid South from Democrat to Republican, something made much easier by Democratic abandonment. Like I said before, they've only themselves to blame for being gerrymandered to oblivion.
by EmmaZahn on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 2:19pm
On the other hand the GOP is making itself a a White, Southern party that has difficulty in national elections. The Current Congress has approval ratings below locust attacks.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 2:29pm
Oh yeah, the GOP has gotten bat shit crazy just since the era of a black president.
Oh how I long for the days when there were sane republicans accusing Clinton of meeting with the KGB when he visited Russia as a student, of running a drug smuggling operation as governor of Arkansas, of murdering over forty people to cover up his scandals, of course Hillary murdered a few of those she's a lesbian don't you know, then they impeached him. The GOP sure has gotten crazy now that there's a black president.
I don't know if its naivety or lack of paying attention to history that makes people believe that what's happening now is unique or what caused people to believe that electing Obama was going to change it. Numerous people posting here now predicted this craziness in the 2008 primary. We saw it and remembered it from living through the Clinton presidency. I don't know if it was naivety or ignorance that caused Obama to believe that he could change the craziness of the Clinton era. He wasn't lying though, I'll give him that. He actually thought he could work with republicans because he wasn't from the 60's so he wouldn't have to "refight those battles."
How stupid to think the republicans wouldn't be just a crazy during his term as they were in Clinton's. It was gross incompetence to bend over backwards and damn near kiss their ass, begging for one, just one, pretty please, vote for my health care bill, I'll give you anything. Well he did and still not a single republican vote. He didn't lie, he really thought he could bring about compromise, but he was and is naive fool. He actually said during his reelection campaign that he thought congress would change when he was reelected because he couldn't run again. rotflmao
by ocean-kat on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 7:11pm
The use of the filibuster is historic. The crazy has increased logarithmically.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 7:43pm
Oh historic. Of course. Nothing historic or unusual about impeachment. That's just SOP. If only we could get back to the sane republicans where they impeach Obama instead of the logarithmically worse filibuster we have today.
by ocean-kat on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 8:13pm
The current Congress is the least productive in decades. Considering States 'Rights, secession was the talk of the day after Obama was elected. We can keep going around and around if you want.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 8:35pm
Go round and round? I don't understand. I thought after all our disagreements you'd be happy we finally see eye to eye.
I too wish this congress would only do the relatively benign, almost harmless impeachment of Obama instead of the far worse behavior of being unproductive. I mean, god, unproductive! That's so much worse than impeachment. Its so crazy now.
by ocean-kat on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 10:22pm
Wow. We agree. This is going to take some time to digest.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 10:37pm
Pet peeve #3: the use of the word logarithmically where exponentially is intended. Logarithmic functions are the inverse of exponential functions.
by Unverified Atheist (not verified) on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 9:13pm
Oops
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 9:14pm
Well, in o-k's defense, since o-k was being sarcastic it still kinda works…
by Unverified Atheist (not verified) on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 9:32pm
You're third pet peeve is interesting. Your going to tell us the first and second aren't you? Guess what my pet peeve is.
by ocean-kat on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 10:28pm
Know-it-alls?
My first pet peeve (and the order is not actually that significant) would be people confusing the meaning of the word ape with the meaning of the word monkey. My second is the incorrect use of apostrophes.
That said, two things about my pet peeves. One, it's not going to be a pet peeve if it's not something that happens frequently (or all-too-frequently), so please don't take my comment as an insult to you. Two, pet peeves are for peccadillos — things that shouldn't annoy me as much as they do. (And truth-be-told, they don't annoy me as much as I might be jokingly indicating.)
by Verified Atheist on Sun, 06/30/2013 - 7:28pm
I haven't yet read Uncle Tom's Cabin, but the "am I not a man and a brother?" slogan was cited by abolitionists and free-soilers in the United States. Garrison, Emerson, Wendell Phillips, and even Lincoln(not an abolitionist before the war) talked a lot about the humanity of the slaves.
by Aaron Carine on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 2:20pm
I think the line came from a medallion worn by British abolitionist, Josiah Wedgwood.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 2:37pm
Some states have argued that because of States' Rights, states can group together and use the principal of interposition to ignore any federal law that the states found unacceptable. Individual states have used nullification in attempts to ignore Federal laws.Neither challenge has been found to have merit.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 2:48pm
Hack away long enough with Occam's shiv and 'interposition' can be seen as what the Civil War was about and what was, at least temporarily, decided.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 3:05pm
I think the Civil War was about Slavery and the ability to expand the practice of Slavery. States' Rights became a justification after the loss. Interposition was argued after Brown and nullification was mentioned in opposition to Obamacare.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 3:11pm
The idea that Slavery was not the prime reason for the Civil War is a fiction. Just read the words of the Southern leadership.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 3:26pm
Yeah, I have written often on this subject. You can cite Taney or J Davis or John C. Calhoun or hundreds of other Southern leaders on that point.
But I just wished to point out a rather good exposition of cultural/family values that relate to all of this.
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/29/paula_deen_is_and_will_always_be_a_racist_partner/
by Richard Day on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 4:24pm
People like to sugar coat things or divert attention to another person or region of the country to avoid addressing the elephant in the room. Snoop Dogg uses the word. Bad things happened in the North, etc.
The young lady testifying in the Trayvon Martin case was honest enough to say that the word "cracker" was used by Trayvon in describing George Zimmerman. She did not consider the word racist. We need to be open about the truth and stop the sugar high. The Civil War was about Slavery. "Nigger" and "Cracker" can get you a beat down under the right circumstances.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 5:18pm