Democrats who were in the Klan.

[presonorek]

Democrats who were in the Klan.

there was lots of them

still are lots of them

We'd settle for 4 names.

 

[Pogo]

no one is going to fall for this ridiculous revisionist history that says the KKK was not a DEMOCRAT ORGANIZATION FROM TOP TO BOTTOM.

And yet ---- you have yet to make that case with any evidence whatsoever.

But then, neither has anybody else.

 

[jon_berzerk]

Democrats who were in the Klan.

there was lots of them

still are lots of them

We'd settle for 4 names.

which party freed the slaves

 

[320 Years of History]

I'm still tickled to death that Dukie gets way more support from black people than Rump does.

I'm not sure on whom that is a sadder reflection: Trump or black folks. <scratching head in uncertainty>

 

[presonorek]

Democrats who were in the Klan.

there was lots of them

still are lots of them

We'd settle for 4 names.

which party freed the slaves

Republican Party

 

[Pogo]

As for the big picture, the OP relies on a "guilt by association" line of ad hominem argumentation. Though often ad hominem lines of argument are fallacious, that one is not insofar as one is describing the Democrats and the Democratic Party extant in the days of Justice Black and Presidents Wilson, Harding and McKinley. That the OP's position is illustrative of one of the exceptions to the "guilt by association" fallacy is why I did not take exception with it.

Yes, there are three fallacies being played here as I see it, Guilt by Association, Composition, and a third deserves to be mentioned and reiterated -- False Dichotomy.

A large part of the mythologists' mythmaking here is based on the fallacy that, since the Klan resisted/opposed/persecuted incoming forces which happened to also be Republicans, then therefore that makes the opposers "Democrats" ---- as if by some magic wand every human at birth is immediately stamped with one of those labels. The False Dichotomy of course is that not everyone chooses to register with a political party at all, and the flaw is the assumption that the act itself is political --- i.e. that they resist/oppose/persecute that element because they are Republicans, as opposed to because they are interlopers, occupiers, "revenooers", or whatever other label-verb. In failing to account for that they have technically committed a double False Dichotomy.

It's a hallmark of history revisionists to ignore any context that undermines their myth. Just as Bowie ignores my challenges to prove his case. Always easier to go than to consider context.

So while, yes, it's accurate to depict the "legacy" Democratic Party as the home of racist policy and ideology, it's downright disingenuous to cast 2016's Democratic party that way. It is that disingenuousness that I have taken exception with in as I've sought to discredit the merit of the OP's thesis and your claims about today's Democratic Party.

Again for the sake of context here it would be more accurate to describe two Democratic Parties (or one with a split personality as I usually put it) which were in mortal combat with each other for over a century. One side comprised the liberal and moderate everyday wing and the other comprised the hyperconservative racists of the South.

The only reason the latter existed has to do with Civil War history ---- by the end of that War the Democratic Party was all that existed in the South, the Whigs, Know Nothings and Constitutional Unionists having withered and died, on top of which the new Republican Party, when it arrived (the Republican Party did not run in the South until after the War) represented the "Party of Lincoln", the man who had vanquished the Confederacy, humiliated it in a war it expected to win, and left its economy shattered. Associating with the Party of Lincoln was from the start unthinkable for the white South, whether one was a racist or not. So in effect the Republican Party was seen in the South for a century --- and I saw this in my own lifetime -- as a cultural taboo, rather than as a political party. The South was still obsessed with the Civil War and its effects, especially culturally, well into the 1960s.

Yet this ultraconservative wing was not at all happy with its only-game-in-town party. Even before the Civil War the Southerners had rebelled at the 1860 Democratic convention, walking out and causing it to be suspended, with the Southerners holding their own convention and nominating their own candidate (Breckinridge) in opposition to the Democrat, who was left with the same number of Southern electoral votes -- zero -- as Lincoln, who wasn't even on a ballot.

In 1924 more Southerners, mostly the Klan, disrupted another convention in order to keep Oscar Underwood and Al Smith from gaining traction (Underwood was the leading voice condemning the Klan and Smith was a Catholic),and pushing for its own candidate McAdoo (who didn't seek the Klan endorsement but didn't reject it either), resulting in a deadlock that nominated an impotent candidate (Davis) who then lost to Coolidge. Four years later the Klan again tried to block Smith but it was losing its influence by then and failed -- Smith became the first Catholic candidate, losing to Hoover, but even as late as 1960 commentators questioned the JFK candidacy on the same basis.

Twenty years later after an impassioned speech on civil rights by then-Minneapolis mayor Hubert Humphrey, coupled with rheotric on the same subject by the incumbent Harry Truman, Southerners walked out yet again and again formed their own ticket, commonly called the Dixiecrats, taking several Southern electoral votes and nearly costing Truman the election --- on the assumption that the "Solid South" would have gone to the Democrat as usual. After Thurmond endorsed the Republican Eisenhower in the next Presidential election, the Democrats kicked him off the ballot and made him run as a write-in (which he won).

Closer to our own time we had George Wallace, constantly railing about "northern Liberals", making an offer to Barry Goldwater to switch to Republican (a revolutionary thought at the time) and be Goldwater's running mate. Goldwater declined and then had to talk Wallace out of running on his own, as he did four years later, again opposing Democrats.

Clearly there was a deep and lasting geographical schism as the DP pandered to both political polar opposites until it could continue no more and LBJ and Strom Thurmond broke the bipolar relationship and shattered 99 years of tradition, Johnson by pushing the CRA and Thurmond by going to the Republicans. Only then were the Southern conservatives finally housed in a party that espoused conservatism.

So it would be inaccurate to describe the DP in its prior bipolar state as collectively or universally racist -- as shown it had opposing elements constantly pulling in opposite directions. On one end the hyperconservatives represented by Thurmond, Wallace, Maddox, Bull Connor, Jesse Helms, etc. On the other end they were opposed by Truman, Humphrey, Kennedy etc, and in the south itself by Underwood, Jack Walton, Ellis Arnall, Huey Long, LBJ, Stetson Kennedy and LeRoy Percy among others. Clearly conflicted rather than consensual.

 

[ElmerMudd]

So the Democrat party invented and propagated the Klan, and to this day are still extremely racist to this day. Look at Chicago, Detroit, the 4th ward here in Houston (which is getting better because the folks who live there stopped listening to house negro's like Shell Jackson Lee, a carpet bagger from no new Youk). Anyway, I figure a list of famous Klan members that were and are democrats, so here go's.

1. Justice Hugo L. Black a supreme court justice who never left or disavowed the organization.

2. William McKinley a republican. Dang, one for one!

3. Woodrow Wilson, damn, imagine the scandal if a modern president was found to be Klan member, and wasn't a Republican. And democrats, even Bammer canonized this dreg. What a dummy.

4. Warren G. Harding. Dang.

Looking at the list, there is way to many racist democrats to list. Seriously, do a serch on it.

The past is the past. We are concerned about today. Whether Trump is a racist or not, he definitely empowers and stirs up white supremicists.

 

[Pogo]

As for the big picture, the OP relies on a "guilt by association" line of ad hominem argumentation. Though often ad hominem lines of argument are fallacious, that one is not insofar as one is describing the Democrats and the Democratic Party extant in the days of Justice Black and Presidents Wilson, Harding and McKinley. That the OP's position is illustrative of one of the exceptions to the "guilt by association" fallacy is why I did not take exception with it.

Yes, there are three fallacies being played here as I see it, Guilt by Association, Composition, and a third deserves to be mentioned and reiterated -- False Dichotomy.

A large part of the mythologists' mythmaking here is based on the fallacy that, since the Klan resisted/opposed/persecuted incoming forces which happened to also be Republicans, then therefore that makes the opposers "Democrats" ---- as if by some magic wand every human at birth is immediately stamped with one of those labels. The False Dichotomy of course is that not everyone chooses to register with a political party at all, and the flaw is the assumption that the act itself is political --- i.e. that they resist/oppose/persecute that element because they are Republicans, as opposed to because they are interlopers, occupiers, "revenooers", or whatever other label-verb. In failing to account for that they have technically committed a double False Dichotomy.

It's a hallmark of history revisionists to ignore any context that undermines their myth. Just as Bowie ignores my challenges to prove his case. Always easier to go than to consider context.

So while, yes, it's accurate to depict the "legacy" Democratic Party as the home of racist policy and ideology, it's downright disingenuous to cast 2016's Democratic party that way. It is that disingenuousness that I have taken exception with in as I've sought to discredit the merit of the OP's thesis and your claims about today's Democratic Party.

Again for the sake of context here it would be more accurate to describe two Democratic Parties (or one with a split personality as I usually put it) which were in mortal combat with each other for over a century. One side comprised the liberal and moderate everyday wing and the other comprised the hyperconservative racists of the South.

The only reason the latter existed has to do with Civil War history ---- by the end of that War the Democratic Party was all that existed in the South, the Whigs, Know Nothings and Constitutional Unionists having withered and died, on top of which the new Republican Party, when it arrived (the Republican Party did not run in the South until after the War) represented the "Party of Lincoln", the man who had vanquished the Confederacy, humiliated it in a war it expected to win, and left its economy shattered. Associating with the Party of Lincoln was from the start unthinkable for the white South, whether one was a racist or not. So in effect the Republican Party was seen in the South for a century --- and I saw this in my own lifetime -- as a cultural taboo, rather than as a political party. The South was still obsessed with the Civil War and its effects, especially culturally, well into the 1960s.

Yet this ultraconservative wing was not at all happy with its only-game-in-town party. Even before the Civil War the Southerners had rebelled at the 1860 Democratic convention, walking out and causing it to be suspended, with the Southerners holding their own convention and nominating their own candidate (Breckinridge) in opposition to the Democrat, who was left with the same number of Southern electoral votes -- zero -- as Lincoln, who wasn't even on a ballot.

In 1924 more Southerners, mostly the Klan, disrupted another convention in order to keep Oscar Underwood and Al Smith from gaining traction (Underwood was the leading voice condemning the Klan and Smith was a Catholic),and pushing for its own candidate McAdoo (who didn't seek the Klan endorsement but didn't reject it either), resulting in a deadlock that nominated an impotent candidate (Davis) who then lost to Coolidge. Four years later the Klan again tried to block Smith but it was losing its influence by then and failed -- Smith became the first Catholic candidate, losing to Hoover, but even as late as 1960 commentators questioned the JFK candidacy on the same basis.

Twenty years later after an impassioned speech on civil rights by then-Minneapolis mayor Hubert Humphrey, coupled with rheotric on the same subject by the incumbent Harry Truman, Southerners walked out yet again and again formed their own ticket, commonly called the Dixiecrats, taking several Southern electoral votes and nearly costing Truman the election --- on the assumption that the "Solid South" would have gone to the Democrat as usual. After Thurmond endorsed the Republican Eisenhower in the next Presidential election, the Democrats kicked him off the ballot and made him run as a write-in (which he won).

Closer to our own time we had George Wallace, constantly railing about "northern Liberals", making an offer to Barry Goldwater to switch to Republican (a revolutionary thought at the time) and be Goldwater's running mate. Goldwater declined and then had to talk Wallace out of running on his own, as he did four years later, again opposing Democrats.

Clearly there was a deep and lasting geographical schism as the DP pandered to both political polar opposites until it could continue no more and LBJ and Strom Thurmond broke the bipolar relationship and shattered 99 years of tradition, Johnson by pushing the CRA and Thurmond by going to the Republicans. Only then were the Southern conservatives finally housed in a party that espoused conservatism.

So it would be inaccurate to describe the DP in its prior bipolar state as collectively or universally racist -- as shown it had opposing elements constantly pulling in opposite directions. On one end the hyperconservatives represented by Thurmond, Wallace, Maddox, Bull Connor, Jesse Helms, etc. On the other end they were opposed by Truman, Humphrey, Kennedy etc, and in the south itself by Underwood, Jack Walton, Ellis Arnall, Huey Long, LBJ, Stetson Kennedy and LeRoy Percy among others. Clearly conflicted rather than consensual.

And I know of no more obvious demonstration of this geographical split than this:

Civil Rights Act vote, 1964:

The original House version:

• Southern Democrats: 7–87 (7–93%)
• Southern Republicans: 0–10 (0–100%)
• >>> ALL SOUTHERNERS: 7-97 (6.7%--93.3%)

• Non-Southern Democrats: 145–9 (94 – 6%)
• Non-Southern Republicans: 138–24 (85 – 15%)
• >>> ALL NON-SOUTHERNERS: 283-33 (89.6%--11.4%)

The Senate version:

• Southern Democrats: 1–20 (5–95%)
• Southern Republicans: 0–1 (0–100%)
• Non-Southern Democrats: 45–1 (98–2%)
• Non-Southern Republicans: 27–5 (84–16%)
• ALL SOUTHERNERS: 1--21 (4.5%--95.5%)
• ALL NON-SOUTHERNERS: 72--6 (92.3%--7.7%)

Pattern by political party irrespective of region: Democrat 94 Republican 85. Not significant. It's a landslide either way

Pattern by region irrespective of political party: 92 South, 96 outside the South.

That's what I call a significant socio-cultural divide.

 

[320 Years of History]

Again for the sake of context here it would be more accurate to describe two Democratic Parties (or one with a split personality as I usually put it) which were in mortal combat with each other for over a century.

The pre- and post-1990s Democratic Party, IMO, have in common only as much as I and Tony Danza: we share a name.

 

[320 Years of History]

That's what I call a significant socio-cultural divide.

That appears to be a vote that had little to do with party and much to do with place.

 

[Pogo]

the Democrat party invented and propagated the Klan

1. The Democratic party did not invent the KKK.
2. The Democratic party that exists today has little but a name in common with the Democratic party prior to the late 20th century.

1. In a previous post I listed a slew of Klan office-holders who happened to be Republicans. Somehow it does not seem to dawn on the mythology parrots that if their myth were a reality.... then a Democrat operation would not be working to elect Republicans...

​

Nor would it be working to oppose its own Democrats (Jack Walton... Oscar Underwood.... Al Smith.... Huey Long.... LBJ....) nor would it be railing against and persecuting its own constituents (blacks... Jews.... Catholics.... immigrants..... labor unions....)

The fact remains, Klan Democrats were opposed by rational Democrats, and Klan Republicans were opposed by rational Republicans. In Maine for example, which was a flip side of the "Solid South", a state where everybody was a Republican, Klanner Owen Brewster was countered and put down by anti-Klanner Arthur Gould. Al Smith and Oscar Underwood, the leading denouncer of the Klan at the time, opposed and blocked William Gibbs McAdoo at the Democratic convention simply because he was endorsed by the Klan in the same way Klanners endorsed Barry Goldwater and Donald Rump. Huey Long declared that if the Imperial Wizard came to Louisiana to campaign against him, he'd be leaving "with his toes turned up".

This was an infestation opposed in greater or lesser degrees by politicians of both parties --- like anything else, usually according to whether it would help them get elected or hurt their opponent.

Somehow all this flies over their collective pointy little head in favor of "what feels good to post". A wishful thinking exercise full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

It continues to stupefy me that there walk among us those who actually think some user-generated meme they find on Googly Images ...... somehow trumps historical fact. It's some kind of mental condition. The OP here actually has William McKinley a member of an organization that literally didn't even exist in his professional lifetime. Just because some Google Image generator put it on a poster without doing basic homework.

That's an astounding degree of self-delusion. Gullible's Travels.


2. Indeed, the function of political parties is simply to consolidate and organize power channels, yet there also walk among us those who strain to believe --- simply because they really really want to --- that the terms "Democrat" and "Republican" somehow mean today what they've always meant ideologically, which is quite impossible. Republicans when the party started were the Liberals and for their time quite radical in general, while the conservatives and "states rights" small decentralized government advocates were Democrats.

They continue to ignore the significant turn of the century shift when the Republican Party shook off its radical element and took on the interests of the wealthy and corporations, beginning in McKinley and culminating with its 1912 rejection of Roosevelt in favor of the corporate-minded Taft, and the Democrats beginning with William Jennings Bryan took on the Populist movement, culminating in FDR, which in large part repopulated them both ideologically. This is where the African American vote shifted from solid R to solid D, creating a bipolar condition where proponents of racism and victims of it shared the same party until LBJ excised it in 1964.

That looks like a wonderfully erudite link. I look forward to perusing it and thanks for putting it up.

You only brought one link.

Bullshit. I got more links if you want 'em ---30, 50 maybe 100. What do you need links on? Me I'm still waiting on the fabulous time travel machine that puts Bill McKinley in a Klan that doesn't even exist in his professional lifetime. Where is that link anyway?

I've already linked the Means, Brewster, Jackson, Baker, Morley and the state of Indiana, individually. By my count that's more than "one".

Your fervent defense of the KKK would lead one to believe you are a member in good standing as all democrats are.

Two itsy-bitsy problems here -- one, I have nowhere "defended" the Klan. Prove me wrong.

And two, I am not a "democrat", even if you knew how to spell it. I am a historian. I have no political party. And that's largely because I DO know that history.

The proof is in how you are democrats are so invested in keeping black people poor and ignorant. I posted a list of a few of the many democrats who we're proud clan members.

Actually you posted a bogus list half of whom were Republicans, which you weren't even aware of, and one of whom lived in a time when the Klan didn't even EXIST. Nor, for any who may have been involved, were any "proud".

In other words you're a partisan hack trolling for Googly Image user-generted memes, building a thread based on their bullshit content, and now you're flailing around in the pit of your own ignorance because you can't be bothered with actual factual history.

This is why you are so hot on the topic. You even admitted to that you have in your possession through inheritance, Klan records and history.

"Admitted" I volunteered it. I had a cousin, now deceased, who was also a historian and writer, and I picked up his work. So what? Unlike you I think I'm in a better position informed than wallowing in ignorance.

Your defense of racism, and specifically the subjugation of minorities is plenty of proof that you specifically are a racist. Likely one of those "south will rise again" weirdos.

Again, I've posted no such thing, here or anywhere else.

Quote me and prove me wrong.

Oh wait ----------- you can't . Doesn't exist.


Wimp.

 

[320 Years of History]

Two itsy-bitsy problems here -- one, I have nowhere "defended" the Klan. Prove me wrong.

Lot's of folks misconstrue one's "giving the Devil his due" as one's also defending him. It is not, not by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Pogo]

Red:
I don't know that I'd call it hypocritical, but "inaccurate" is what I'd call it. One can easily show that the KKK and it's members' values were what were considered "conservative values" from the day the Klan was created right up to today. To say they were and remain the values of a given party is simply not so. The sociopolitical stance of the two major parties has shifted and with that shift, racists' party affiliation has shifted.

Oh, so if we put the actual people aside and what parties they were in and ignore which parties policies were targeted to keeping blacks segregated and impoverished for generations and instead use this nifty neato-keeno 2 dimensional horsehit political spectrum to illustrate everything, then we can see, if we squint our eyes really tight and lean way to the left that, yes, the Republicans are now the party of the KKK.....roflmao what a bunch of ignorant ass propaganda.

My God, you have no shame 320, none whatso ever.

The KKK was DEMOCRAT!

Own it, the historical record doesnt change, bubba.

"The Trees":
The rebuttals I've presented highlight the distinction between the following --

• creating a thing vs. enabling a thing's development,
• encouraging a thing's creation/development vs. acquiescing to a thing's existence/development

-- and call observers to refrain from (1) oversimplifying the matter and/or (2) exaggerating the matter.

As goes the discussion at hand, there are several "things" in play:

• the KKK organization itself,
• the attitudes the KKK's members espoused,
• the activities in which the KKK's members engaged, and
• the party to which the KKK's members belong(ed).

Looking back at how and over what point I involved myself in this thread (post #100), you'll note that I focused on one assertion the OP provides as a premise for the remainder of the post. That assertion is that "the Democrat party invented ... the Klan." That assertion is false. The Democratic Party, quite simply, did not invent the Klan. The content found at the first link I included in post #100 makes that clear.

Now you can accuse me of presenting a revisionist version of history as goes the one point I made; indeed you have done exactly that in this thread. Be that as it may, your accusation holds no water because you have yet to provide any evidence that the Democratic Party of the 1860s invented/created the KKK. You have not because none exists that it did and there is solid evidence that a band of Tennessee college students did create the KKK.

We can play philosophical games with which fallacy or blend thereof be the one(s) in play, but doing so is of little value because no matter which one it is, the undeniable fact is that the Party was not the creator of the KKK. That makes the argument invalid, regardless of the applicable fallacy(s), because it rests on a factually false premise.


"The Forest":
As for the big picture, the OP relies on a "guilt by association" line of ad hominem argumentation. Though often ad hominem lines of argument are fallacious, that one is not insofar as one is describing the Democrats and the Democratic Party extant in the days of Justice Black and Presidents Wilson, Harding and McKinley. That the OP's position is illustrative of one of the exceptions to the "guilt by association" fallacy is why I did not take exception with it.

The problem with the rest of the OP is that it attempts to equate the Democratic Party of Black, Wilson, et al with 2016's Democratic Party. Well, that too I've shown to be a factually inaccurate representation of 2016's Democratic Party. That was the point of the second link in post #100.

I have not denied that the pre-1990s Democratic Party was the party of racists and bigots. Why haven't I? Because the "Dixiecrats" didn't make a singular mass migration to the GOP immediately upon the ratification of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. When did Southern Democrats flock to the GOP? Mostly during the Reagan and Goldwater years. That's something of an oversimplification, but if one is to hone in on key single moments in time, they are the most significant ones in modern times.

• Construction of the Racist Republican
  • Half a century ago, though he was not a racist, Barry Goldwater’s “Southern strategy” certainly contributed to the rift that still exists between the GOP and black voters because it aligned his campaign with segregationists. Even after the South’s racial attitudes were more comfortably integrated with the rest of the United States, sincere clashes in ideologies—and some inept positioning on the part of Ronald Reagan—did not heal that rift.
    
    
  • Harkening back to the ideological foundations of Barry Goldwater, which promoted federalism, and expressing the belief that the country’s culture on race had changed since 1964, Reagan pushed to lessen the federal government’s role in all American life including aspects concerned with civil rights. In fact, from his first inaugural address in which he laid out his philosophical vision, he attempted to shift the national conversation to a more universalist approach to governing with less emphasis on special interests.
    
    He contended “this administration’s objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination.” This coincided with a conservative interpretation of fairness, which demands a society in which there is as even a playing field as possible but no expectations about results. As a consequence, Reagan’s policies often ran counter to perceived minority interests.
    
    One problem was Reagan’s style over his substance: a general lack of understanding on the Great Communicator’s part when it came to getting his message across to people of color. After all, George Wallace who had clearly been a segregationist for much of his career—who had quite literally stood in the schoolhouse door to stop black advancement—was able to win over an amazing number of black voters in his twilight years in politics.
• Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
  • It has become, for liberals and leftists enraged by the way Republicans never suffer the consequences for turning electoral politics into a cesspool, a kind of smoking gun. The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “******, ******, ******.” By 1968 you can’t say “******”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “******, ******.”​

• DOG WHISTLE POLITICS HOW CODED RACIAL APPEALS HAVE REINVENTED RACISM AND WRECKED THE MIDDLE CLASS
  • Campaigning for president, Ronald Reagan liked to tell stories of Cadillac-driving “welfare queens” and “strapping young bucks” buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In flogging these tales about the perils of welfare run amok, Reagan always denied any racism and emphasized he never mentioned race. He didn’t need to because he was blowing a dog whistle.
    
  • Reagan’s presidency also corresponded with the conservative popularization of colorblindness, which urges everyone to avoid race as the surest way to get past racial problems. This racial etiquette is widely embraced, including among liberals, yet colorblindness bolsters dog whistle politics in numerous ways.

So while, yes, it's accurate to depict the "legacy" Democratic Party as the home of racist policy and ideology, it's downright disingenuous to cast 2016's Democratic party that way. It is that disingenuousness that I have taken exception with in as I've sought to discredit the merit of the OP's thesis and your claims about today's Democratic Party.

Do I take shame in my remarks that "fairly present in all material respects?" Not one bit! The folks who should be ashamed of themselves are they who aim to misrepresent the present by associating it with the past. Times and people change. Racists haven't changed their views, but they have in the main changed their party preference from the Democratic Party to the GOP. And like the Democratic Party of the pre-1990s, neither the GOP nor its current Presidential candidate has told racists to "get out of the GOP and go form their own party for they are not welcome in the GOP."


Sidebar:

In the preface to Lopez's book, one finds the following historically accurate anecdote:

As a contemporary of Obama’s at Harvard Law, let me add my voice to the chorus of those saying that Obama was no militant minority. Obama did not study with [Derrick] Bell, nor take any course that focused on race and American law. On a campus highly polarized around racial issues, as it was in those years, this may have been an early harbinger of Obama’s tendency to hold himself aloof from racial contentions. Th en there was Obama’s election to the prestigious presidency of the Harvard Law Review . It’s widely known that Obama won as the consensus candidate after conservative and liberal factions fought themselves to exhaustion.

Less well known is that these camps were racially identifi ed, with almost all of the African American review members and their allies on one side. When conservatives threw their support to Obama, they ended a racial as well as political standoff. As others have observed, Obama’s conciliatory above- the fray political style from those years has carried over to his presidency. I would say the same regarding the approach to race Obama seemed to cultivate as a student—that one can heal racial divisions by standing apart from racial conflict, simply letting race play itself out. Th is is far from what Derrick Bell taught.​

End of sidebar.

Very good post, very informative. If you really dig you will see that many in all political organization was in the Klan or somehow courted them. And in those days it was okay I guess. When it became not cool, that's when you saw all this welfare stuff. Going to the strapping black man driving a caddy, and eating a T-bone bought with food stamps is in a way accurate. Food stamps are one of the tools used to keep minorities down. Elect a republican? Well, you will lose your food stamps and section 8. Democrats have never treated black people as anything more then a voting block and they traded in their whips for food stamps.

Look, as I have written elsewhere on USMB, for me, race and politics in a 2010s context, is about establishing trust and goodwill among the parties to any such discussion. The most effective way of doing that is to "fairly present in all material respects" the historic and current truths of the matter.

Am I going to deny the verity at a high level of what you wrote in the last quoted passage above? No, of course not. That would be a disingenuous house of cards to build on my part. What I take exception with about that post it is that for folks who aren't very well informed about the evolution of the two major parties hastily arrive at a conclusion about 2016's manifestation of either major party due to having no or precious little understanding of the full picture behind your remarks.

Now I don't particularly know how well informed you are on the details that give teeth to the observed truths you've cited, I do know that a whole lot of folks here are poorly or simply not well informed about them. Accordingly, they are quite susceptible to arriving at an inaccurate conclusion about both major parties due to their placing undue emphasis on the literality of the observation and ignoring the details that make your summarization so.

And what is it when a writer/speaker presents a very limited rhetorical picture of a matter as "touchy" as race in America and in the Dem and Rep parties? It's inflammatory. Inflammatory rhetoric isn't useful at all in advancing anyone toward a "win-win" means of overcoming the ills, angst and animosity that suffuse the state of race relations in the U.S. In fact, it's rhetoric that is detrimental to achieving any such end.

And that's exactly why we do this.

 

[Pogo]

Two itsy-bitsy problems here -- one, I have nowhere "defended" the Klan. Prove me wrong.

Lot's of folks misconstrue one's "giving the Devil his due" as one's also defending him. It is not, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Can't say I know what "giving the devil his due" means. I dunno, I just counter myths when I see myths that I know are myths. This knuckledragger element seems to believe (as a hive) that if you don't join them in denigrating their target, then by definition it makes you a "defender" of their target's opposite.

----- which is yet another False Dichotomy.

They keep running the same fallacy over and over, expecting different results.

 

[320 Years of History]

Can't say I know what "giving the devil his due" means.

give the devil his due

 

[Pogo]

Democrats who were in the Klan.

there was lots of them

still are lots of them

Like who? Because all the one's I've seen, like David Dukes, call themselves Republican.

https://psmag.com/how-the-kkk-helped-create-the-solid-gop-south-9dd3ad90a3e#.f23dit56e
How the KKK Helped Create the Solid GOP South

why are you so one sided asshole

everyone knows that grand wizard will quigg endorsed hillary clinton

and his group donated 20 grand to her campaign


so either your blind or your a liar

Will Quigg, whoever he may be, is no "Grand Wizard" except in his pointed little head. That's because the Klan as a siingle organization ---- does not exist, and hasn't existed since 1944. April 23rd to be exact.

Will Quigg, David Duke, and anybody else who calls himself "Klan" or dresses up as such, is simply playing dress-up with the fantasies in his own head. So you cannot ascribe significance to his attention-whoring (which apparently worked on you, wanna buy a bridge?) without employing a Composition Fallacy. Can't be done.

Besides which -- I doubt any moron dressing up in sheets even HAS twenty thousand to pass around. If he did he wouldn't be dressing in sheets.

An "endorsement" by some clown playing dress-up is nothing new. Barry Goldwater got one. Ronald Reagan got one. Donald Rump got one too. The difference, of course, is that Goldwater and Reagan didn't say "I don't know what you're even talking about, I know nothing about white supremacists or the Klan or what you're even talking about".

In other words they didn't try to pander those votes into their own pockets like the old bipolar Democrats used to --- they grew a pair and rejected them outright. As did Rump 16 years prior before he changed his mind.

 

[Pogo]

To the extent there is credible evidence that today's Nazi Party is the same as the one of the 1920s - 1940s, I would not at all make that sort of an argument. Why would I if it's so that nothing about the party's general makeup and espousals have not changed?

The fact is that the Democratic and Republican Parties have changed and among those changes are the race-related positions held and policies advocated by significant blocs of adherents within them. Having this discussion as though those changes have not occurred is absurd.

Oh so you are completely unaware that HRC was an admirer and follower of Senator Byrd a KKK Grand Dragon poohbah?

Or that her husband Bill Clinton was an admirer of J. William Fulbright, a Southern racist and signer of the Southern Manifesto?

Are you seriously that ignorant about the Clinton royal family or are you just dismissive because it is not ever likely to affect YOU?

Can you say "jumping to conclusions?" Can you say "cherry picking?"

• From prejudice to progress: The political evolution of Sen. Robert Byrd
  
• On Fulbright and Bill Clinton:
  My own father was (maybe to some extent is) a Southern racist. He was surely one of mentors; however, on matters of race, he is my mentor only insofar as having shown me what is wrong with the views, positions and attitudes he used to extoll. In other words, it is in part from my close association with him that I learned what and how not to think about non-whites, and what I do think about non-whites' character and comportment is not remotely similar to what my father thought. Does that make me overall a non-admirer of my father and his personal and professional accomplishments? Not by any stroke of the imagination. There is plenty my father accomplished that is admirable notwithstanding that there are also things about his past that are not.
  
  So if you want to cite Bill Clinton's relationship with Fulbright as being pivotal to Bill's own views on matters of race and central to an argument that the Democratic party remains the home of racists and bigots, I suggest you put forth an actual argument to that effect rather than tossing arbitrary facts out as though they carry the weight you imply they do by having cited them.
  
  You may want to try to find something in Bill Clinton's eulogy of Fulbright. Perhaps instead you can find it in Fulbright's remarks on the arrogance of power.

In the meantime, why don't you just cease and desist with the myopic approach to making your point that has thus far imbued your remarks in this thread with the lack of gravitas, the childish insouciance of a ten year old?

These cretins seem to believe that anything one did in one's past becomes some kind of permanent line, even if they roundly reject it later after reflection. Hence the recurring "Hillary's mentor was Klan" meme, in spite of the fact that Byrd quit and left it behind before Hillary was even born, let alone before running for office.

It seems to be some kind of view that humans are incapable of thought, which ironically jibes with the way they present their own arguments --- immutable, incapable of any kind of change, adjustment or consideration of any challenge to their incoming belief.

 

[Pogo]

When you Democrats were lynching blacks from the nearest tree on a semi weekly basis,

Once again --- your LINK to where anybody was standing by the lynching tree checking party registrations?

Or is it your proctology exam you're reading?

 

[Pogo]

What is pathetic is that you Democrats will go to any lengths

I'm not a Democrat, and I know you are aware of my having attested to being an Independent.

It's important for them to redefine us, since they can't be bothered to learn who we actually are. They're not in effect arguing with us, but with their concept of who/what they'd rather argue with because they can't handle what we have.

 

[Pogo]

Look, as I have written elsewhere on USMB, for me, race and politics in a 2010s context, is about establishing trust and goodwill among the parties to any such discussion. The most effective way of doing that is to "fairly present in all material respects" the historic and current truths of the matter.

Am I going to deny the verity at a high level of what you wrote in the last quoted passage above? No, of course not. That would be a disingenuous house of cards to build on my part. What I take exception with about that post it is that for folks who aren't very well informed about the evolution of the two major parties hastily arrive at a conclusion about 2016's manifestation of either major party due to having no or precious little understanding of the full picture behind your remarks.

Now I don't particularly know how well informed you are on the details that give teeth to the observed truths you've cited, I do know that a whole lot of folks here are poorly or simply not well informed about them. Accordingly, they are quite susceptible to arriving at an inaccurate conclusion about both major parties due to their placing undue emphasis on the literality of the observation and ignoring the details that make your summarization so.

And what is it when a writer/speaker presents a very limited rhetorical picture of a matter as "touchy" as race in America and in the Dem and Rep parties? It's inflammatory. Inflammatory rhetoric isn't useful at all in advancing anyone toward a "win-win" means of overcoming the ills, angst and animosity that suffuse the state of race relations in the U.S. In fact, it's rhetoric that is detrimental to achieving any such end.

You are truly hilarious.

If the Nazi Party were legal in Germany, I could just see a Nazi campaigning for the Jewish vote, "That was all in the past. Just forget about those death camps, we havent done anything like that in over 50 years. L:ets keep this about the election in 2010 and later, shall we? Why dig up ancient history?"

Does not apply. False comparison. The Nazi Party actually engaged in genocide. The Democratic Party did not.
I've challenged you to make that case, and you keep running away.

So no.