September 1854: U.S. Senator David R. Atchison (D-MO, and a good Christian) in letter to U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis:
"[O]ur people are resolved to go in [to Kansas] and take their niggers with them…. [Within six months we will have] the Devil to play in Kansas… We are organizing. We will be compelled to shoot, burn, and hang, but the thing will soon be over: we intend to "Mormonize" the abolitionists…. In a public speech, I advised the squatters in Kansas and the people of Missouri to give a horse thief, robber, or [murderer] a fair trial, but to hang a Negro thief or abolitionist without judge or jury. This sentiment met with almost universal applause…"
1981: Lee Atwater, one-time chair of the Republican National Committee and member of the Reagan administration:
"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger'. By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing [and] states' rights. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites … obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'nigger, nigger'."
It appears as though all that has changed in over the past 160 years in American politics is the name of the political party and nature of their rhetoric. [I am sure you noted that "abolitionist" were the "liberals" of their day.]
I believe these two quotes could just as well open about every discussion that attempts to describe current conservative political philosophy and the positions taken by the modern Republican Party. In other words, one needs to determine if what is being said is a principle or merely a rhetorical subterfuge for a century old racial fear that is no longer politically acceptable to be expressed in its rawest form. After all, Atwater's approach to political persuasion can be viewed as clearly an advance over Atchison's.
In these statements, Atchison and Atwater demonstrate the undiminished power fear and hate wield in the contest for political power in the United States. Atwater establishes the efficacy of rhetoric to shield this fear and hate from scrutiny. Rhetoric, like ideas and actions, has consequences.
Those who seek to possess or preserve wealth or power through the political process can rarely gain it in a democratic society unless they can ally themselves with the fears and hates of those in the majority whose economic and social position is more tenuous than theirs.
Although, we can take just about any issue of current political significance to demonstrate how Atwater’s insight works in practice, let’s take a look at gun control:
Does anyone still really believe the gun control debate is about the Constitution, freedom or liberty?
Forget for a moment the influence of a few large gun manufacturers who in one way or another fund the lobbying and public relations activities of the NRA, does anyone believe that gun control regulations will prevent hunters from hunting?
No one, not even the NRA believes that unlimited access to firearms will protect school children from crazy white guys with assault rifles. As unrealistic as it may be, even they propose, highly trained and most likely regulated armed guards as a means to safeguard children while they attend classes.
Would anyone really feel safer if everyone on an airplane carried a gun instead of the occasional trained Air Marshall?
Does anyone believe that our armed forces will suddenly go AWOL thereby allowing a squad of Muslim Al Qaeda terrorists to invade and take over the country? Or even a part of it, like say South Dakota?
Is it believable to conceive even the possibility that the nations domestic public safety apparatus will be commandeered by Barak Obama in order to impose his brand of Bolshevism on the country?
As for protecting ones homes and businesses, there has never been a credible proposal from gun control advocates that would prohibit trained and licensed individuals from access to guns with which to protect their homes and businesses.
So, if it is not about hunting, foreign invasion and domestic revolution or protecting one’s home and business, what is it that has those who oppose any form of gun control so frightened of that they no longer trust the police to assure public safety?
Criminals?
Violent crime, has been decreasing in the US and, outside of the South, localized in most part to a few large cities. The vast majority of crimes of violence are domestic squabbles exacerbated by access to guns [especially in the South where they seem to kill and maim their spouses and relatives with shockingly more regularity than people in the rest of the country].
How about, nigger, nigger, nigger or spic, spic spic?
Freedom, liberty, anti-terrorism, public safety and protection from criminals, are they abstract enough for you?
Note: Now before those reading this consider it simply to be another rant of mine against evil Republicans and in favor of saintly Democrats let me explain something. From the later part of the 1950's through 2003, I have been involved to a greater of lesser degree in the affairs of both political parties on the local, State and Federal levels. At times, I was a political operative of some sort, first for Republicans and then later for Democrats. At other times I represented interest groups, governmental agencies and private clients in the political process.
From the Fifties to the latter part of the eighties, I had developed close personal and professional relationships with many Republican elected officials on both coasts and in Washington. They and many of their leaders, Eisenhower, Brooks, Rockefeller, Lindsey (before his change of parties) and before them my ethnic heroes, LaGuardia and Marcantonio, whatever else their foibles and moral failings may have been, to a man shared with thoughtful Democrats of the time (as did Goldwater and Reagan) a belief that society and government must assure the health, safety and education of all the nations children, assist those citizens in need, provide a living wage for its workers, assure a sound economy, guarantee the right of working men to collectively negotiate with their employers, resist any one group of citizen's attempt to exercise undue control over others and on many other similar issues. Where they differed was often regarding the extent and cost of achieving these goals and the best means of delivering them.
They believed along with the Democrats of the time, that those who received a greater portion of the benefits of the nation and society than others had a greater civic, not just moral but civic, duty to pay significantly more than those less fortunate in order to assist those in the country in dire need, or for those like public safety and military personnel, medical workers and teachers who have chosen to accept lesser renumeration in return for their public services and to fund the education of all the nations children as well as provide for the common defense and the public infrastructure so necessary for economic development and social mobility.
These Republicans that I knew then were repulsed by many of those in the Democratic Party, who cynically used the programs that they all had agreed upon, to benefit their often corrupt and racist supporters, subverting most of it from ever reaching those to whom it was intended. This situation remained until LBJ attempted to put an end to this hypocrisy. Unfortunately, his actions allowed Nixon, Atwater and people like them to cynically use the dissatisfaction among those who believed that they were losing an advantage that buffered them from poverty and despair, in order to secure political power for themselves and their supporters.
Were I to ask those pre-Atwater moderate Republicans, and I actually did ask some of them, whether or not the Second Amendment protected in addition to firearms used for hunting, sport and defense the right of individuals to carry concealed weapons manufactured for armed forces use to hunt down and kill people, they would have been shocked that anyone would consider that it did.
One in fact responded more or less:
"Consider what it would mean for public safety officials and the ability of the police to suppress violent crimes were criminals or those intent on crime free to carry, without license or registration, concealed military armaments designed to inflict the maximum damage on an enemy. And even more, think what it would do to civic order and public safety were those who distribute these weapons of mayhem into the stream of commerce free, even if they do so negligently, to do so without responsibility if they were later to be used in a crime."
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Today's Quotes:
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but they can always be brought to do the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and endangering the country. It works the same in every country."
Herman Goering during his testimony at the Nuremberg Trials.
"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
Joseph Stalin
"What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream?"
Woody Allen
"Metaphysical naiveté always ends in murder. It fragments the world. Little acts of kindness and charity mask the monstrous evil they abet. And the system rolls forward. The polar ice caps melt. The droughts rage over cropland. The drones deliver death from the sky. The state moves inexorably forward to place us in chains. The sick die. The poor starve. The prisons fill. And the careerist, plodding forward, does his or her job."
Chris Hedges, Truthdig