This foolish Democrat is not Sheila Jackson Lee. Nope — this one is Rep. Al Green. Kerry Picket caught up with him after last week’s terrorism hearings, and found him seething that the hearings on the threat of radical Islamic terrorism should have covered the Ku Klux Klan.
REP. Al GREEN:I think that all criminals should be prosecuted. I think that all terrorists should be investigated which is why I said we ought to investigate all of them and that would include the KKK. Over a hundred years of terrorism why not investigate them too. They are rooted in a religion as well. Check their website out. You’ll see.
KP: Congressman King said they haven’t caused as many problems and…
REP. GREEN:Well ask the men who have been castrated whether they caused a problem. Ask the men who were lynched whether they caused a problem.
KP:When did that happen recently, sir?
REP. GREEN: Does it have to happen recently, and they are still existing for us to investigate them?
If you never had to live with a cross burning, you don’t appreciate what a cross burning can do in terms of terrorizing people. My suspicion is, based on what you’re saying to me, that I should say to you, I hope you won’t defend the KKK.
KP: I don’t have any plans to, sir.
REP. GREEN: I hope you won’t defend the KKK.
There’s audio at the link.
No defending of the KKK on the party of Picket, or elsewhere.
Since the hearings didn’t cover that repulsive but largely defunct terrorist group, here are a few facts about them. The KKK was founded by a group that included Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general, after the end of the Civil War. In many ways, the Klan was the terrorist wing of the southern Democratic Party for the next several decades. If Klan had an opposite in the GOP, it would have been the Grand Army of the Republic, a Union Civil War veterans group that included black and white members and favored full civil rights. The KKK’s rise was tied to its links with the Democratic Party in the South, and to help from Democrats in Washington. The Klan’s first targets were freed slaves, freed by a Republican president, and Republicans across the south, among whom were the first blacks elected to political office and some of the nation’s first successful black businessmen. A Democratic president, Andrew Johnson, vetoed the first post-Civil War civil rights bill, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress. The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, had been assassinated by a Democrat actor, John Wilkes Booth, putting Johnson into the Oval Office. Booth was among the most prominent actors in America at the time, and was known for his “Copperhead” Democratic views supporting the South and slavery.
It was a Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson, who would give the racist, pro-Klan film Birth of a Nation (its original title was The Clansman) a rave review after a private screening in the White House in 1915. Wilson, the Progressive Democrat, was arguably the most racist president in US history, at least after the Civil War. He generally gets little if any criticism for his terrible record on race: His Postmaster General segregated the Washington DC postal HQ, and the Departments of the Treasury and Navy followed suit. Wilson’s policies of segregating the federal government would last until undone by the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. That the civil rights movement succeeded is testament that the KKK’s power is broken.
The KKK was one of the most noxious, retrograde forces ever to appear on the American stage. Its full history deserves exposure. The problem with adding the Klan to hearings on radical Islamic terrorism is that, on the one hand, the Klan is not truly transnational and hasn’t been a real force in the US in several decades (thankfully, or as someone in a racially mixed marriage, they would be a direct threat to me and my family), and on the other hand, the Klan has nothing to do with radical Islamic terrorism. The Klan’s terrorism was of a different age; radical Islam is a massive global threat, right now.
Giving credit where it is due. Truman integrated the federal workforce and the military by executive order.
I understand that the Mongol Horde has been guilty of some atrocities, also. Shouldn’t they have been included in these hearings?
My father-in-law was a Methodist preacher in north Georgia in the 1950′s and 1960′s. My mother-in-law, a school teacher, decided to send their youngest child out of zone to the school where she taught elementary school. The Klan did not approve and marched on their home, burning a cross in their yard to threaten the family (who are not a racial minority). That particular group after anyone who disagreed with them regardless of skin tone.
So I assume he knows the KKK was the Democrat party’s terror arm? It’s not possible he thinks Lincoln the founder of the modern day Republican party, would put together the KKK is it?
The Democrat party, the party of slavery, segregation and other racial horrors should not be telling others what to do.
The Democrat party was also responsible for the Civil War … Read the history of the Kansas Nebraska act of 1854 and see what they did with their majorities.
All due respect, Brian, but you left out the last Democrat who was a member of the KKK… the late Senator Robert Carlyle Byrd.
Are you sure that the KKK was Democrat? I was taught in American history class last semester that they were conservative.
I don’t want to minimize the history of racism, such as it actually was, in American history. But I am also sick unto nauseousness at the way blacks and it hers regularly slander the entire white race with both ancient crimes, committed by no one who is alive today, against no one who is alive today. While legacies of racism still certainly exist, such as they are, it has been nearly 150 years since slavery was fought over and abolished. Fought by a majority of whites against a minority of whites. Yet blacks have conveniently forgotten the fact, and seem to imagine that they themselves were recently e slaves, and by the majority of whites alive today.
The excuses are beginning to wear thin. I perceive that many of the ills experienced by blacks in America today are often of their own making, a legacy of their own self-marginalization. This is true, and yet whites and America are still broadly blamed for their failure to thrive. Today, Eric Holder and Obama suggest that test scores be lowered in order to allow blacks, who otherwise would fail simple civil service tests, may be given jobs. This ordained at the expense of far better candidates, and at the expense of the hapless tax payers. It is outrageous.
So not only is the KKK a defunct group which has never threatened the entire nation as a whole, its crimes are not now even pertinent to the discussion of Islamic terrorism. To broach the subject in such a context is nothing more than a blatant pretext to drag America through the mud, defame all white people by the ancient crimes of the few, and to deflect attention away from the seditious Muslims who preach their traitorous sedition from their mosques every day, a.k.a. “Islamic radicalization”. There is nothing positive in conflating the terror of the KKK with the terror of Islam. Such an act exhibits a profound malignancy towards America in general, and against white people in particular by black grievance mongers, their friends, apologists for Islam, and racist bigots of the first order who have an abiding hatred of white people.
Hey Al Green, what say about this one?
Malik Shabazz ‘Kill White Babies’ Comment”.
Your history of the KKK is somewhat incomplete, though the general attitude towards them as terrorists is more or less reasonable. Forrest and others were in the original Klan; near as anyone can tell at this juncture, he wasn’t one of the founders. He disbanded the organization in the early 1870′s. He had agreed to lead the organization on the understanding that it was a defensive group, consisting of whites who had to terrorize the freed slaves to keep them from running rampant, raping white women and so forth. It’s important to remember that back then, knowledge we take for granted now was then either regarded as erroneous or not even considered. Practically no one, for instance, believed blacks to be the intellectual equals of whites, and few thought blacks emotionally or psychologically (a term itself really not invented yet) as stable as whites. Anyway, Forrest and his friends decided that “bad people” had gotten into the Klan, and corrupted the group, hijacking it and using it for terrorism, much of it overtly political. Klansmen in those days typically attacked blacks who were either trying to register to vote, or actually voting.
Anyway, Forrest disbanded the Klan with a public announcement, and went on to more or less become (in the last years of his life) an advocate for black equality. I know it’s weird, but you can look it up. The Klan, disbanded, melted away somewhat, but there were groups called “night riders” who more or less performed the same tasks (keeping blacks away from the polls, lynching black criminal suspects, etc.) for the next three decades. Sometime around the turn of the century, a massive picnic and organization party was held at Kennesaw Mountain, and the Klan was reborn, complete with a carefully edited version of Forrest’s life that left out that racial reform advocate he became in the last years of his life. They went on to do their thing from then on, though they’ve waned in membership and popularity (thankfully) in the last few years.
Oh, and the silly white robes were originally worn to terrorize supposedly superstitious blacks, by making them think that the wearers were the ghosts of dead Confederate soldiers, returned from the battlefield to defend their homes and families against the newly freed blacks.
Actually, the real problem with Green’s request is that:
a) the Klan’s activity was and is investigated. The Klan was broken by the FBI who went after them for multiple felonies, civil rights violations, etc. Civil lawsuits and fines eventually caused them to go bankrupt. Also, politically, their ideology became untenable under both the federal civil rights laws and general public change in attitudes.
b) the Klan’s activities are still regularly investigated by the FBI, ATF, etc that keeps them downgraded as a group. More often these days because it often involves weapons violations and drug dealing (largely Meth) by various members or small groups.
So, Green’s commentary is grandstanding on a high BS level. It isn’t necessary for Congress to investigate the Klan because it is already “on the list” and being regularly investigated. Further, any time one of the Klan pops up his or her head and advocates killing someone or taking some action, they are almost immediately put under surveillance and often arrested. People might recall that during the 2008 elections some white supremacists (can’t recall their actual associations), were arrested on the way to Colorado because information was received that they were planning to assassinate then Senator Obama. That information was gleaned from an ongoing investigation into gun running or drugs (I can’t recall which, but I do recall that the authorities were reluctant to speak on how they came across it because they did not want to blow their other investigation).
So, there is precedent, but again, there is the issue of the first amendment protecting speech and the right to practice religion. Therefore, what is covered under the first amendment must be separated from what is a threat to people, property and national security.
The issue here is that there is the untangling of “free speech” from actual acts. As everyone knows, the Klan in small numbers (as well as other disgusting groups like the American Nationalist Socialist Party – Or AMerican Nazis, as they were once called), still manages to hold marches and open “offices” (we just stopped one from opening in my area in 2008, but it was the FBI that really took care of it by going after the finances and other aspects of the leader who was supposed to head this opening; he was prosecuted and the office never opened).
In reality, this is the way to go after the purveyors of Radical Islam. It is the reason why congressional hearings are necessary. We need to be able to separate “free speech” issues of practicing faith (however we feel about that faith), from the issues of civil rights violations. Before the FBI or DOJ or anyone else can go after that, there must be some sort of guidance from Congress. Guidance that must give some form of cover for the FBI and others to reduce questions or potential violations of the actual rights we guarantee to everyone.
The same way in which we go after different religious cults that are considered dangerous or who are violating other civil rights or other nominal “political groups” or “militias”.
In the case of radicalism that begins in the Mosque or through various organizations, a path must be opened for civil lawsuits and federal pursuit. For instance…if an attacker succeeds in harming persons and property in the pursuit of “jihad” and it is found that he attended a specific mosque that agitates for any form of violent jihad through sub groups, through sermons, through pamphlets or documentation, persons injured or who lose property must be able to sue the Mosque, the Imam and anyone else attached to the organization who could be reasonably considered responsible for bringing that about.
Mosque financials must be able to be subpoenaed along with other pertinent information. Of course, any prosecutor or civil attorney on the part of the plaintiffs would have to review the past cases to see how the judicial system acts on these questions. for instance, unless there is proof of a wide spread conspiracy by members of the mosque/church, member lists might be off limits. We should also be paying attention to what the treasury department and IRS are doing in tracking funding going in and out of these organizations.
It is interesting that almost ten years later, someone in congress is starting to bring up the question. It would appear to me, considering the committee that King sits on and the information he is probably privy to that we don’t know, that there are likely some questions or concerns by various departments on what they are seeing v. what they are allowed to investigate and how. More interesting is that it is happening in Congress under the Obama administration.
This says to me that there is something potentially very big in the wind and one or more of these federal organizations feel they are being hampered or are unable to do what they feel they need to because there has been all this cover provided the religion and its practitioners. Mostly for the purpose of furthering our national interests.
Dems are so transparent in their disingenuity. The syllogism:
KKK = South. South = Republicans. Republicans are racist.
How about:
Muslims terrorists are fundamentalists. Evangelical Christians are fundamentalists and Republicans. Republican Evangelicals are terrorists.
It is all about political power. They will do or say whatever they have to and can get away with to gain power. They do not care about the harm they do. There is only power. Power. Patronage. Privilege. The New Aristocracy.