The People v. the Democratic Party
My new Broadside from my PJ colleague Roger Kimball‘s Encounter Books is now available on Amazon for the low, low price of $5.99. (The Kindle edition — with links! — comes out at the end of the month.) How can you resist:
A taste of what’s in store:
The first thing you need to know about the Democratic Party is that its first vice president, the traitor Aaron Burr, shot and killed one of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, and then plotted sedition against his own president. Everything else is, as they say, commentary….
My brief is against the Democratic Party, which from the inception of the Republic has been a public enemy – an organization antithetical to our nation’s traditions, civic virtues, and moral values.
Does that seem overstated? Consider the facts. Whether it has been defending slavery, selling out our secrets, or simply voting “present” so as not to take a stand on the crucial moral issues of both statecraft and soulcraft, the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition has always been in the forefront of everything inimical to the United States of America.
Its unofficial modern slogan – “by any means necessary” – is indicative of its fundamental amorality. Its will to power, especially since the mid-19th century, is insatiable. It sees greater government as the greater good. It views individual liberty as dangerous and personal choice – always excepting abortion, the only sacrament the atheist left acknowledges and honors – as contrary to the will of the demos. It is always in favor of centralized fascism, including but not limited to the power to ban, criminalize, and anathematize speech and ideas with which it does not agree and which threaten its hegemony.
And all of this in disguise – under the cloak of “compassion,” of “tolerance,” of “fairness.” The Tarnhelm beneath which modern “liberalism” (its very name mocks the political origins of the term) lurks, coiled and ready to strike whenever our side lets down its guard. “Come, I think hell’s a fable,” says Dr. Faustus to Mephistopheles in Marlowe’s play. “Ay, think so still, till experience change thy mind,” replies the devil.
And so in the hell the left has made of America over the past half-century or so we currently dwell.
My Broadside, which runs about 6,000 words or so, is the 30th in Roger’s ongoing series of provocative essays about current events; other authors include my friend and PJ/NRO colleague, Andy McCarthy, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, and European Parliamentarian extraordinaire, Daniel Hannan. So think of them as playing cards in an all-star conservative lineup and collect the whole set!
“the party of the Ku Klux Klan”
Ah, yes, those Dixiecrats like Strom et al whom Nixon shrewdly knew were ripe for the picking with his Southern Strategy. States’ rights? Yeah, sure.
PS – The Klan still exists, and it ain’t on the left and it ain’t in the Dems’ column.
Strom Thurmond was a long-time Democratic segregationist who ran for president in 1948 on the States Rights Democratic Party ticket; he was not a Klan member. However, Sen. Robert Byrd, “the conscience of the Senate,” most definitely was. Thurmond switched party registration — one of only a handful who did — in 1964 at the age of 62 (he lived to be 100). The fact is, very few southern Democrats switched parties around the time of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, primarily because it was the GOP’s support that enabled the act’s passage. Read: http://www.black-and-right.com/2010/03/19/the-dixiecrat-myth/
You can read more about the southern strategy here: http://blackquillandink.com/?p=6082
Oh, don’t bother that lefty useful idiot with facts; he’s a Talkingpoint-O-Matic.
The people who peddle the “the-southern-racist-Dems-all-became-Repubs” argument never consider at least two points:
1) Why were these people Dems in the first place? Answer: many were actually originally part of FDR’s New Deal coalition. In other words, many were actually economic statists (i.e. Theodore Bilbo) who, despite being anti-communist, were nevertheless on the left economically. Many were pro-union and anti-capitalist. A well kept secret is that the Klan was always virulently anti-free enterprise.
2) Some of the most conservative members of the Republican Party (i.e. Everett Dirksen of Illinois) were instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In fact, not only was Dirksen instrumental in passing it, but he wrote a great deal of it.
Other facts, such as that Dwight Eisenhower passed the first civil rights legislation after Reconstruction and that big bad Joe McCarthy was a supporter of equal rights for blacks, never make it into left history books.
There have been books exonerating Joe McCarthy – the left’s answer was that it contained no new information – and then they shut up about and imposed a news blackout. So McCarthy the witch-hunter still stands.
Also, LBJ signed the Civil Rights legislation and then enactd the Great Society for one and one reason only – to steal black voters away from the GOP and stick into the GOPs eye (now get-em back you posers!). Pretty much the same reason FDR did his New Deal – to give the public crap off the backs of the productive and then DARED the GOP to end it.
KKK is/was/and always will be democrats. Democrats is/was/and always will be flaming racists. Northern democrats invited southern blacks onto their plantation and they went. There they were imprisoned and they live a worse existance than ever their slave forebears ever did.
Democrats steal everything that was a good GOP idea. They even stole the color blue because every one knew they were commies and they didn’t want to be associated with their true colors! Until a decade ago blue was the GOPs color.
Democrats suck!
Senator Robert Byrd (d) was unavailbable for comment.
PS – Aren’t you that captain that got riffed?
Well, basically, there’s only two choices aren’t there? The KKK won’t be a part of the Dem Party for obvious reasons. That doesn’t make them conservatives any more than conservative black folks who vote Dem are actually liberals. Voting by race is not a political principle, no matter how much people dress it up in rhetoric – it’s just voting by race.
To our credit, the KKK and neo-Nazis are discredited and marginalized in America. Their mirror image, black websites and racial caucuses within congress, etc., are not.
How sad that you are so subnormal and inhumane as to think that this might be true and worth posting in a public forum.
Go in peace; but first, acquire an instrument of corporal punishment (paddle, riding crop, whatever; liberals have various bumwarming tools in stock, don’t pretend otherwise, everybody knows it) whack yourself upon the bottom, repeatedly and with increasing force, perhaps 20-30 strokes. With a dolt like you, it may take 50.
Have a cigarette. Then, go in peace.
Shouldn’t the title be reversed, “The Democrat Party vs. the People”?
Congrats on the new book! Thanks for at least calling party by the correct name, rather than the Frank Luntz talking point, you show great integrity. And with the Swedish Chef on board it will no doubt be a best seller! Congrats!
Well we have two statist parties. The doubly, firmly committed one, the DemonCrats and the wishy washing we stand for nothing much except saying we’re conservative and then enacting one left wing program after another. So here we are, drowning in debt and CJ Roberts gives us a crap sandwich called Obamacare, complete with a rationing board. Seniors, start stocking up on aspirin, tylenol, or Advil to make your transition to the next world a little more comfortable. What’s left of freedom and the constitution? Not much. So they’ll probably come for your guns and ammo next or tax it into oblivion. They’ve already shoved God out of the town square and the schools.
The Democratic Party also produced such “gems” as Robert Byrd and George Wallace, two of the biggest racists ever to be elected to office. And yet you never really hear much about that from the party that claims to be the best “friends” of blacks. It also seems strange that the Republican Party, the party that actually got Lincoln elected and eventually destroyed slavery in this country, is now considered to be no friend of African-Americans. Strange how the mainstream media has rehabilitated the racist Democratic Party and trashed the Republican Party, which actually freed the slaves. Kind of makes you wonder who’s running the mainstream media, doesn’t it?
I remember a tweet no so long ago from Chris Rock who listed all the accomplishments of the GOP – and then ended it with, “But tell me – what have you done for us lately?” You know, kinda like muslims.
I really dispise the “What are you going to do for me/give to me” attitude that has totally permiated this country. There was a time people would be in severth heaven just to slave and scrimp and save to buy a piece of dirt and then it was up to them what they did with that piece of dirt.
It is not enough for the democrats to simply destroy the U.S. Constitution through activist judges and a complicit media, they are ‘all in’ on trying to disarm us through Hillary’s staunch support for the UN’s arms treaty. Enough is enough already.
I served 22 1/2 years defending my country against foreign enemies; it is now time to protect Her from our domestic enemies. I am not alone – this is a clear warning to those who would actually try and take away our means of defending ourselves from outright, naked tyranny – try it at your own peril.
God bless America
And God bless you sir,but they aren’t worried too much about our guns, they have weaponized Marburg Disease missiles. If you don’t know what that is,look it up. In my opinion, the line should have been drawn a long time ago and much farther back than gun seizure. A free and adversarial media was the public’s first line of defense,now with the news-for-profit model,it will be the first enemy we encounter and must overcome on the way to freedom. No matter what we do,or the reasons behind it,the media is in the pockets of our enemies and will demonize all of our actions as “terrorism”,”racism”,what-have-you and have half the country fighting the people fighting to give them their freedoms back.
My minimum wage physician can’t wait to get my business.
I’ll “like” him on “FaceBook”.
Mr. Walsh,
This article is a shameful misreading — or worse, misrepresentation — of the historical record.
You seem to be ignorant of the fact that political parties within the United States have undergone serious, substantial changes since the infamous Hamilton-Burr duel two centuries ago. It is intellectually cheap for you to act as if the members of the present Democratic Party have ANYTHING to do with certain founding fathers, their political philsophies, or their personal affairs (which, after all, is what the Hamilton-Burr duel was about — it had nothing to do with governmental affairs.) Furthermore, to imply that ANY member of the current Democratic Party condones slavery or segregation is also a filthy slander which is far below this website and far beneath my contempt and the standards of honest readers.
This is shameful. I encourage you to rethink this filthy, ill-educated, and slanderous screed.
Regardless, after your particularly inane piece, I will never read Pajamas Media article ever again.
Good day,
John R. M. Benjamin
Georgetown University
The current Democratic Party condones slavery because it condones Marxist economic class struggle.
“The proletariat [tax-eating, non-disabled, government-dependents] will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital [property] from the bourgeoisie [laboring, tax-paying middle class and entrepreneurs], to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state [Marxist Government]… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property… And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois [middle class] individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.” Karl Marx
Economic class struggle enslaves the middle class according to his abilities, while enriching the Marxists and temporarily benefiting the dependent proletariat class according to their needs. The labor-challenged proletariat class has unlimited needs; so, as slaves, the laboring middle class may be taxed without limit according to their ability. Marxists in the Democratic Party aim for increasing power over the individual – where government – a small group of people after all – possesses a “right” to the fruit of the individual’s labor in the government’s pursuit of happiness – in violation of the Natural Law embedded in our Declaration of Independence. Marxist government empowered with this so-called “collectivist right” to individual property is reminiscent of the so-called “divine right” of Medieval Kings. Marxist Socialism is simply a modern form of Medieval Feudalism where Marxist collectivization of property (and thereby power) replaces the same collectivization by Medieval Kings, Princes and Bishops.
Under Economic Marxism the middle class will be gradually reduced to the economic level of existing poverty – this occurs when enough of a population goes over to the proletariat side – with outstretched hands – voting for the Party which will rob the laboring middle class on their behalf. Serfdom and poverty (internal slavery) are inevitable in a Marxist society because the people comprising collectivist government invariably become greedy for fruit of other men’s labor – and because the work ethic of the laboring middle class is destroyed as they eventually become exhausted and demoralized by the burden of excessive taxation of their labor on behalf of the parasitic proletariat and Marxist ruling classes. At the end of Marxist economic class struggle, when the middle class finally succumbs, there will be a dramatic fall off in production of food and other goods and services. Envision a cruise ship where more and more passengers run over to the left side looking for “free stuff” from government – of course the “free stuff” is the fruit of other men’s labor – the laboring men still slogging it out on the right side. Eventually there will not be enough laborers and entrepreneurs on the right side of the ship to prevent it from capsizing. Crisis and possible anarchy inevitably ensues under Marxism – and who “comes to the rescue” – with dictatorial martial law – but the Marxist Ruling Class it’s self. Marxist “Social Justice” ends in poverty and slavery for both the middle and proletariat classes – all except for the Marxists will end up as the Proles of George Orwell’s 1984. After the final crisis of Marxist economic class struggle there will emerge a “dictatorship of the proletariat” – code for dictatorship of the Marxist ruling class. Marxist economic class struggle is not the cure for slavery and poverty – it is one of the chief causes of slavery and poverty in the modern world – an organized crime against humanity.
“That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, ‘You work and toil [middle class] and earn bread, and I’ll eat it [Marxist and proletariat classes].’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race [or class] of men as an apology for enslaving another race [or class], it is the same tyrannical principle.” Abraham Lincoln
Right. And a hundred years from now, there will be another democrat apologist in your place explaining how those millions of murdered babies of the 20th and 21st centuries “have nothing to do with what the Democrat party stands for yesterday or today.”
Godless principles and gross immorality know no age.
I used to be a libral in my twenties. Then I woke up. I started realizing my taxes were being used to support those who did not work, although they were able bodied. I was in the military then and working my butt off. I remember signs around Viginia Beach saying ” Dogs and Sailors keep off grass”. All the people I talked to about these signs were people who did not like the military, i.e. Liberals! Now, liberals do like the military, only because it serves their political interest in doing so, because they know now that to do so will get them votes. Where were these liberals when I was trying to feed a family of four in the 80′s on my military pay? Trashing Reagan, playing politics, and so forth. I’m tired of liberals, who think think more taxes are a way to solve our social problems. You cannot give more to those people who want our tax dollars just because it makes you feel good and wins you elections. To be fair, those in the financial bussiness should not look for our government to bail them out when they make bad bussiness decisions. Let them fail. I’m sure somebody will come up to repace them. But all for naught, money has a big sway in our politics, which means we,re stuck with what we have.
“… political parties within the United States have undergone serious, substantial changes..”
Which you failed to point out. Instead you feign disgust, insult those present and stomp out without ever articulating your disagreement.
The faces may change, but their little tantrums don’t.
Well, it is true that some things have changed since they were the party of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” They’ve substituted recreational drugs for the rum, they’ve gone to war against the Catholics, and now they’re the ones who have to be rebelled against in order to have anything like liberty in America.
Democrats are not racists? Ask any black conservative what they think about your statement. Better yet ask any Asian on campus (assuming they are allowed on campus) if they think you lefties are racists.
OMG! JOHN DON’T GO! WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT YOUR INSITE!? WA WA WA BOO HOO HOO OMG! John’s gone…… We’ll miss him, won’t we?
Yes,that is all true. It is also true that all of the people responsible for slavery are dead and segregation ended a long time ago, so when is your side going to stop insisting that black people are still suffering from slavery and segregation and need a helping hand to do as well as whites, who OWE it to them due to their supposed responsibility for all of those things?
It’s funny how people and institutions can change and none of the people responsible are running things now when we bring up your party’s history of actual responsibility for slavery,segregation,and the murder of hundreds of innocent black folks,but somehow I am responsible for all of that stuff by virtue of my race when I have never owned a slave in my life nor was I even alive during the time of segregation when we talk about affirmative action and words that white people aren’t allowed to use in public discourse but blacks can freely hurl at anyone they want to,anytime they want to.
I’m tired of being crucified for YOUR party’s sins and being made a scapegoat for the evils YOUR people committed because I share the same skin color and somehow mysteriously “benefit” from past oppression of blacks even though I grew up down the street from the ghetto,in the same conditions,WITHOUT the government assistance they got from YOU people because I was “oppressing them” by dint of being white and alive.
All because of your dogmatic,idiotic,mystical BS. YOU were directly responsible for a lot of the “3 or more blacks vs one white guy” fights I got into growing up. YOU ARE THE REASON I GOT THE CRAP BEATEN OUTTA ME so they could “get even with whitey” for the crap YOUR POLITICAL PARTY DID. YOUR RHETORIC stirred up these people against me based on my skin color. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR RACISM, against both blacks AND whites.
Also, if I may, I encourage you to stick to writing movies, specifically those of the Disney Channel variety.
I hear Hillary Duff is also very good at spouting off ridiculous, ignorant babble.
LOL! Are you done with your little snit now?
BTW – you seem stuck in the past – Hilary Duff is a grown married woman with a child. You should move on like the rest of the planet.
You’re not doing so bad yourself. Haven’t you got anything to refute any of this directed your way?
OMG! John your back I thought you were leaving. I see you brought your little friend Brother John with you, great lets all PARTY guys and welcome John back!
Cheap Seats, are you a leftist pretending to be a conservative in order to make us look bad?
If you really are a conservative, I suggest you Just Shut Up. Your ignorance and immaturity is a poor reflection on the conservative cause.
If you won’t shut up, at least learn to spell.
Mr. John R. M. Benjamin of Georgetown University:
Today’s Democratic Party, like yesterday’s, still holds that one section of the human population are property. Today’s Democrats are anti-abolitionists, just as the party of old. And just as obnoxious about it. “Material cooperation with grave evil.”
Today’s Democratic Party, just like yesterday’s, still doesn’t believe in equal treatment of the races under the law. At no point in its history has the Democratic Party believed that. It went straight from slavery to segregation to affirmative action. But never, never this: One set of rules for everyone.
Today’s Democratic Party, just like yesterday’s, still wants to profit from the labor of others. PJ O’Rourke was correct
So I think the comparison of today’s Democrats to the party of slavery, secession and segregation is fair and relevant. Nationally, it’s still a racist, anti-abolitionist party. Locally, it’s still the party of Tammany Hall-style politics.
Yes, I think Mr. Walsh’s polemic is tendentious and over-simplifies the historical record, it’s not entirely without foundation.
I have discussed this type of issue with many of today’s Democrats. They seem to hold that they are heirs to the old Republican Party, e.g., progressives like Teddy Roosevelt. They hold the Dixiecrat’s switch from the Democratic to Republican parties in the 60s leaves them off the hook. So their political party somehow goes from Lincoln through Teddy and then Woodrow Wilson and FDR to today. I don’t agree.
Well, you’re going to get a lot of argument about the past but that aside, let’s talk about 2012. Pretend you’re an alien visiting Earth and are being given a tour. You are shown the Democratic Party and told it is at its heart, anti-racist.
Then, it is brought to your attention that the Asian, Hispanic and Black caucuses in congress are all Democrats. All the “black culture” websites are on the Left and anti-white. The Democratic President spent 20 years in an anti-white religious cult and his wife wrote her senior thesis about “blackness.”
This President appoints a black, anti-white activist as Atty. General of the U.S. who, a few weeks into his term, holds a press conference about race. Holder turns the DOJ into an arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP. At Holder’s contempt vote, the racial tri-caucuses walk out in protest based on the idea the GOP doesn’t like Holder because he’s black.
Our mythical alien is introduced to the likes of Frederica Wilson, Bobby Rush and Sheila Jackson Lee. He is made aware of mainstream voices in mainstream colleges and TV on the Left like Melissa Harris-Perry, Dr. Boyce Watkins, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson and James Cone. Our visitor is made aware of affirmative action and about 1,000 other racial constructs cozened by the Left from an Assoc. of Black Mathematicians to the NAACP.
Our alien is made aware of the fact that not one single mainstream political or social artifact organized around the concept of race exists on the political Right. Say what you will about the GOP, on this issue, the alien will give over with a Daffy Duck “Ummmmmm, ah, yeeeah!”
You have to have your head examined to be a Dem in 2012. It is the last holdout of institutionalized racism within the U.S. And that was always the fight wasn’t it? Not anecdotes, not racist emails, not dirty looks – institutions.
Mr. Benjamin is right that the Democratic party per se is not officially or formally crooked and racist. He can’t deny, however, that the nation’s crooks and racists express themselves politically from the Democratic party –by at least something along the 80/20 line –and probably in truth more lopsided than even that.
The only real question in this topic re the Democratic party is, what would be the size, the political power, of the house-cleaned rump?
Since yours truly is embittered by the birthright-for-pottage damage done my country by this party, my guess is the rump is barely able to maintain national-party status.
However, this is enough for decent Democrats to stage a post-rehab comeback, and –not to sound too 18th century-ish here –honor would demand they try.
If Paul wins a plurality of delegates in Nebraska this weekend, his name will be put forth as a nominee versus Mitt Romney in Tampa.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/09/12642257-ron-pauls-last-stand?lite
I’d really like it if you paul-bots would unhitch your wagon from this man. You’d be better served by hitching up to his son, Rand. Rand Paul might be someone we could work with.
There is still religion being taught in schools. Moral relativism, global warming hysteria, aggressive atheism (not to be confused with rational atheism or reasonable agnoscticism), homophilia (homoneutral is not good enough, they have an agenda to push), scientism (pseudoscience with a sociopolitical agenda, see textbook Ecoscience for an example of this agenda driven “science”). I hypothesize that a brain scan study would confirm that these ideologies light up the same area of the brain as other faith based ideologies/ religions. I don’t want my children learning the dark religion that claims that they (as a human being) are a disease upon the Earth or any of the population control psychobabble bullsh@t.
Madalyn Murray claimed she was bullied because she opposed religion in schools, these days you get bullied if you want to raise your children in any way that is outside of the religion of political correctness and population control. This is not an accident. Read Ecoscience (John Holdren, scientism czar), it was all planned long ago to undermine traditional religious values and replace them with the inverted values of the Church of population control (or to put it more bluntly, the Church of Death). Considering Obama’s choices for tyrants in high places, it only takes a little bit of imagination to conclude that death panels and population control are part of the big plan. I don’t think this is at all unfair to assume, considering the hideously evil plans that are put forward in John Holdren’s book “Ecoscience”. I don’t care if he wrote it in the past, that kind of sinister plotting and outright abuse of science is unforgivable. Unless he is fired or resigns, I will continue to assume that Obama also has similar disrespect for science and humanity.
It is very obvious that the Democrat party in America is a state supported religion. Many devoted democrats grew up in religious families and worshipped at their parents’ church. But the democrat party took that religious idealism and warped it into a fantaticism with which the democrats presently lead their lives. Many high ranking democrats were once Christian people; even Al Gore studied for the ministry and Bill Moyers, the left wing PBS pundit, was once a Baptist preacher. Many Irish Americans were raised in very conservative Catholic households but as soon as they joined the democrat party they turned against the magisterium of the Catholic Church and start leading their lives according to the teachings of Ted Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. Right now the democrats are waging a vicious war against the Catholic Church in America and the leaders of these attacks are prominently from Irish ex Catholic families like the Kennedys, the Sebelius family etc. The Democrat party is the true American religion which has declared war on all other religions with the exception of Islam which for some crazy reason the democrats have embraced. The Democrat Church runs on fanaticism and will stop at nothing until it has taken complete control of what remains of the former USA. O tempora! O mores!
The first thing you need to kwo is that is it NOT the “Democratic Party”.
It’s the Democrat Party.
There are both grammatical and philosophical reasons for that important distinction.
A little thinking may be required for some of you to appreciate the difference. Trust me – it will be worth the effort. (There will be a side benefit, too – the more you think the less you will be like them.)
Best of all, using the correct term infuriates the Democrats!
–’democratic’ is just the –blessedly root-accurate –idiomatic useage.
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