Edgetho
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- Mar 27, 2012
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This isn't meant to start a fight, just to start a discussion.
There are lessons in this short piece that we could all pay attention to....
Black History Lessons from the GOP | National Review Online
We are closing in on the end of Black History Month, and National Review has not exactly been inundated by copy relating to the occasion.
That is in part as it should be: Conservatives are not big on viewing human beings as racial aggregates. We are capitalists who see people as buyers and sellers, investors and entrepreneurs in a marketplace that cares more about returns than race; we are constitutionalists who believe that we are equal individuals under the law; we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
Conservative may not have a lot of use for Black History Month, but it does provide us with an occasion for something fruitful: remembering when the Republican party was home to a fair number of legitimate bad-asses gun-toting, slavery-fighting, fearless men and women who led lives of astounding personal courage and political consequence.
Todays politicians spend a great deal of time congratulating each other and themselves on their courage, as though in the 21st-century U.S. elected officials were being picked off by assassins for holding mildly controversial opinions. The best and worst of them write books with horribly self-aggrandizing titles: Unintimidated, Duty, No Apology, Living History, Taking Heat, Courage and Consequence. The Republican party of 2014 may be overwhelmingly white, but what it really is is overwhelmingly lacking in hombres. (Of course the Democratic party is utterly bereft in that capacity, too, but thats to be expected; they arent the party of Lincoln theyre the party of your fourth-grade art teacher.) Here are a few inspirational Republicans to remember during Black History Month.
She drinks whiskey, and she swears, and she is a Republican, which makes her a low, foul creature. That was one schoolgirls description of Mary Fields, a.k.a. Stagecoach Mary, who is an obvious candidate for induction into the inaugural class in the American Bad-Ass Hall of Fame. Miss Fields was a freed slave who worked for some years as the foreman of a Catholic mission in what was then the Montana territory, hauling freight through blizzards and fighting wolves to defend the nuns cargo.
She lost that job after a professional dispute with a hired man ended in a gunfight. Gary Cooper, who was slightly acquainted with her, tells it like this: Mary had a fondness for hard liquor that was matched only by her capacity to put it away, and its historical fact that one of Cascades early mayors, D. W. Monroe, gave special permission to let Mary drink in the saloons with men, a privilege, if you want to call it that. Born a slave somewhere in Tennessee, some say in 1832, Mary lived to become one of the freest souls ever to draw breath or a .38. Because she was unsure of her exact birthday, Mr. Cooper recalled, they would close Cascade schools in her honor whenever she felt like having one. <snip>
Does this look like a woman who is big on compromising her Second Amendment rights?
Despite the emotional tenor of the times, Mr. Lynch was surprisingly undemonstrative in his rhetoric, even wry. In the debate over the Civil Rights Act of 1875, he observed: If any of our Democratic friends will vote for [the bill], we will be agreeably surprised. He was not surprised no Democrat voted for the bill.
But Mr. Lynch was not one to let his Republican colleagues off easy, either, saying in the same speech: If Republicans should vote against it, we will be sorely disappointed; it will be to us a source of deep mortification as well as profound regret. We will feel as though we are deserted in the house of our friends. But I have no fears whatever in this respect. You have stood by the colored people of this country when it was more unpopular to do so than it is to pass this bill. You have fulfilled every promise thus far, and I have no reason to believe that you will not fulfill this one. The bill was eventually signed into law by President Grant before being declared unconstitutional.
Unfortunately, the Redshirts and the Klan eventually were successful in delivering his House seat to the Democrats, but he took the loss in stride and did what Republicans do went into business and made himself some money. He lived to be 92 and was buried with full honors at Arlington.
Edge:
More at the link. Fun stuff
There are lessons in this short piece that we could all pay attention to....
Black History Lessons from the GOP | National Review Online
We are closing in on the end of Black History Month, and National Review has not exactly been inundated by copy relating to the occasion.
That is in part as it should be: Conservatives are not big on viewing human beings as racial aggregates. We are capitalists who see people as buyers and sellers, investors and entrepreneurs in a marketplace that cares more about returns than race; we are constitutionalists who believe that we are equal individuals under the law; we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
Conservative may not have a lot of use for Black History Month, but it does provide us with an occasion for something fruitful: remembering when the Republican party was home to a fair number of legitimate bad-asses gun-toting, slavery-fighting, fearless men and women who led lives of astounding personal courage and political consequence.
Todays politicians spend a great deal of time congratulating each other and themselves on their courage, as though in the 21st-century U.S. elected officials were being picked off by assassins for holding mildly controversial opinions. The best and worst of them write books with horribly self-aggrandizing titles: Unintimidated, Duty, No Apology, Living History, Taking Heat, Courage and Consequence. The Republican party of 2014 may be overwhelmingly white, but what it really is is overwhelmingly lacking in hombres. (Of course the Democratic party is utterly bereft in that capacity, too, but thats to be expected; they arent the party of Lincoln theyre the party of your fourth-grade art teacher.) Here are a few inspirational Republicans to remember during Black History Month.
She drinks whiskey, and she swears, and she is a Republican, which makes her a low, foul creature. That was one schoolgirls description of Mary Fields, a.k.a. Stagecoach Mary, who is an obvious candidate for induction into the inaugural class in the American Bad-Ass Hall of Fame. Miss Fields was a freed slave who worked for some years as the foreman of a Catholic mission in what was then the Montana territory, hauling freight through blizzards and fighting wolves to defend the nuns cargo.
She lost that job after a professional dispute with a hired man ended in a gunfight. Gary Cooper, who was slightly acquainted with her, tells it like this: Mary had a fondness for hard liquor that was matched only by her capacity to put it away, and its historical fact that one of Cascades early mayors, D. W. Monroe, gave special permission to let Mary drink in the saloons with men, a privilege, if you want to call it that. Born a slave somewhere in Tennessee, some say in 1832, Mary lived to become one of the freest souls ever to draw breath or a .38. Because she was unsure of her exact birthday, Mr. Cooper recalled, they would close Cascade schools in her honor whenever she felt like having one. <snip>
Does this look like a woman who is big on compromising her Second Amendment rights?
Despite the emotional tenor of the times, Mr. Lynch was surprisingly undemonstrative in his rhetoric, even wry. In the debate over the Civil Rights Act of 1875, he observed: If any of our Democratic friends will vote for [the bill], we will be agreeably surprised. He was not surprised no Democrat voted for the bill.
But Mr. Lynch was not one to let his Republican colleagues off easy, either, saying in the same speech: If Republicans should vote against it, we will be sorely disappointed; it will be to us a source of deep mortification as well as profound regret. We will feel as though we are deserted in the house of our friends. But I have no fears whatever in this respect. You have stood by the colored people of this country when it was more unpopular to do so than it is to pass this bill. You have fulfilled every promise thus far, and I have no reason to believe that you will not fulfill this one. The bill was eventually signed into law by President Grant before being declared unconstitutional.
Unfortunately, the Redshirts and the Klan eventually were successful in delivering his House seat to the Democrats, but he took the loss in stride and did what Republicans do went into business and made himself some money. He lived to be 92 and was buried with full honors at Arlington.
Edge:
More at the link. Fun stuff
