Another great speech by President Trump.
He's got it down to an art: No flourishes, no purple prose, no overwrought rhetoric--just straight-forward facts and proposals. It's worth watching and reading, unlike the pathetic Democratic response by a weird-looking (What was that make-up?) Joe Kennedy III. If JKIII is the best they've got . . .
My favorite line in the Trump speech? "Americans are dreamers, too." Bam! A shot to the heart!
Perhaps even better than the speech were the reactions from the Democrats when he was giving it. They didn't know how to react.
Nancy Pelosi looked as if she were struggling with a set of ill-fitting dentures -- "sour face" does not begin to describe her look. Others could not bring themselves to acknowledge the suffering of black families at the hands of MS-13 gangsters; the black caucus could not even applaud the very positive employment numbers for the black community; the Dems could not express support for the coal miners of West Virginia who are seeing their economy revive. They could not applaud Trump's statement that the US is now a major energy-producing powerhouse and for the first time in years, an energy exporter. They could not applaud the return of manufacturing and the repatriation of hundreds of billions of dollars. They could not acknowledge reality.
Trump cornered the Dems on the immigration issue and they knew it, and their faces showed it. They must now reject a path for citizenship for 1.8 million illegals and argue that it's better for them to stay illegal.
It was a masterful political exhibition by one of the most unusual and clever politicians ever to emerge on the world scene.
MAGA!
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Friday, January 26, 2018
The Arc de Trump: The President's New Nationalism Takes the Stage
He's done it again.
President Trump is THE rockstar of the global political world. I don't even know why other leaders bother showing up when this POTUS is in town. We see that President Trump has up-ended the usually silly gathering in Davos, Switzerland, traditionally a place for the international political and financial elites to meet, greet, spew empty platitudes, and tell each other how great and knowledgable they are--you, know, like the Oscars, but with snow.
He rode into town in great Flight of the Valkyries fashion: Marine One and its rotary-winged escorts beating a tattoo over the peaks and valleys of sub-arctic eastern Switzerland, a tattoo portending the arrival of The Revolution helmed by a 71-year-old billionaire real estate developer from Queens.
As I noted above, was anybody else at the meeting? Who knows? Who cares? Davos belonged to Trump. He gave an excellent, thoughtful, and concise explanation of The New Nationalism that he so ably represents.
I normally don't listen to politicians' speeches, much preferring to read them afterwards, but in this instance it was difficult to find the complete text, and one that was accurate, so I clicked over to YouTube and found it here.
Listen to it.
It is a simple, straightforward announcement of a revolution in the way we will conduct ourselves in the international marketplace. He makes clear that he will work for America First, not America Alone, and calls upon other leaders to put their countries first, as well.
He is calling, in no uncertain terms, for an end to the phony and destructive internationalism of the past few decades, the internationalism that has devastated towns and cities throughout the Western world, hollowed out once proud industrial centers, and made legions of mountebanks and blow-hards rich and powerful at the expense of the average Joe. He intends to use America's considerable clout to end that. He makes a good unvarnished case that doing so will benefit the "forgotten communities," and enable them, in the US, at least, to achieve a major portion of the American Dream, to wit, a good job, with good pay.
The world is formed of nation-states, and Donald Trump wants us to act in accordance with that reality.
Reality. What a revolutionary concept . . . . Trump is going to be a great president.
President Trump is THE rockstar of the global political world. I don't even know why other leaders bother showing up when this POTUS is in town. We see that President Trump has up-ended the usually silly gathering in Davos, Switzerland, traditionally a place for the international political and financial elites to meet, greet, spew empty platitudes, and tell each other how great and knowledgable they are--you, know, like the Oscars, but with snow.
He rode into town in great Flight of the Valkyries fashion: Marine One and its rotary-winged escorts beating a tattoo over the peaks and valleys of sub-arctic eastern Switzerland, a tattoo portending the arrival of The Revolution helmed by a 71-year-old billionaire real estate developer from Queens.
As I noted above, was anybody else at the meeting? Who knows? Who cares? Davos belonged to Trump. He gave an excellent, thoughtful, and concise explanation of The New Nationalism that he so ably represents.
I normally don't listen to politicians' speeches, much preferring to read them afterwards, but in this instance it was difficult to find the complete text, and one that was accurate, so I clicked over to YouTube and found it here.
Listen to it.
It is a simple, straightforward announcement of a revolution in the way we will conduct ourselves in the international marketplace. He makes clear that he will work for America First, not America Alone, and calls upon other leaders to put their countries first, as well.
He is calling, in no uncertain terms, for an end to the phony and destructive internationalism of the past few decades, the internationalism that has devastated towns and cities throughout the Western world, hollowed out once proud industrial centers, and made legions of mountebanks and blow-hards rich and powerful at the expense of the average Joe. He intends to use America's considerable clout to end that. He makes a good unvarnished case that doing so will benefit the "forgotten communities," and enable them, in the US, at least, to achieve a major portion of the American Dream, to wit, a good job, with good pay.
The world is formed of nation-states, and Donald Trump wants us to act in accordance with that reality.
Reality. What a revolutionary concept . . . . Trump is going to be a great president.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Perversity is Our Strength!
Just thought I would throw out a new slogan for the Hollywood crowd and the legions of progressive bien pensants who besiege us daily.
This slogan fits you like a glove.
I am talking about you, Woody Allen, Meryl Streep, Harvey Weinstein, James Franco, Jane Fonda, Madonna, Kevin Spacey, and on and on.
"Perversity is our Strength!"
Shout it loud!
Shout it proud!
You earned it!
Shout it from your walled-in mansions! Shout it from your limos! Have your agents put it out in press releases!
Wear it like a Pussy Hat!
This slogan fits you like a glove.
I am talking about you, Woody Allen, Meryl Streep, Harvey Weinstein, James Franco, Jane Fonda, Madonna, Kevin Spacey, and on and on.
"Perversity is our Strength!"
Shout it loud!
Shout it proud!
You earned it!
Shout it from your walled-in mansions! Shout it from your limos! Have your agents put it out in press releases!
Wear it like a Pussy Hat!
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Recalling Another Government Shutdown and Suspended from Twitter
I was assigned to Main State during the GREAT government shutdowns of November 1995-January 1996. This was the Clinton Administration; the President and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich got into a battle of wills over some long-forgotten issues that produced several weeks of government shutdown.
It was a good time to be alive.
I was working in the Pol-Mil Affairs Bureau in an office that handled a mish-mash of issues, among that were two, in particular, that got us declared "essential": we had responsibility for coordinating non-combatant evacuations and (my favorite little piece of bureaucratic power) providing diplomatic clearance for foreign aircraft. Several of us in the office got declared "essential" to the national security and had to go to work, even without getting paid.
It was the most fun I ever had working at State. Halls and offices nearly empty; cafeteria shuttered; parking lot almost deserted; a tranquil silence like a comforting blanket lay over it all.
The Department never worked more efficiently.
If you got an issue that needed clearances from office X or Y, you walked over there with your little paper in hand, grabbed the first frightened, lonely person you could find, and breathlessly thundered out, "YOU have to clear this now. YOU cannot refer it to anybody else. YOU have to make a decision! YOU have to say YES or NO!"
In addition, the rules required that we be out of the building before 5 pm because of some liability issues; only in the most extreme emergency could you stay past that bewitching hour. These limited hours meant an end to long, meandering staff meetings called at 6 pm, and not starting until 645 pm. Conversations were brief and to the point. Papers followed suit.
I loved going to work, secure in the knowledge that I would eventually get paid. It also made me realize that you could get rid of anywhere between two-thirds and three-fourths of the bureaucrats and things would work just fine.
BTW, just got notified that my Twitter account has been "locked" because I challenged some BS story told by Mark Ruffalo about conversations he supposedly had in Paris in which people expressed horror over Trump. Twitter says I advocated ethnic and racial hatred . . .
This was my Tweet:
It was a good time to be alive.
I was working in the Pol-Mil Affairs Bureau in an office that handled a mish-mash of issues, among that were two, in particular, that got us declared "essential": we had responsibility for coordinating non-combatant evacuations and (my favorite little piece of bureaucratic power) providing diplomatic clearance for foreign aircraft. Several of us in the office got declared "essential" to the national security and had to go to work, even without getting paid.
It was the most fun I ever had working at State. Halls and offices nearly empty; cafeteria shuttered; parking lot almost deserted; a tranquil silence like a comforting blanket lay over it all.
The Department never worked more efficiently.
If you got an issue that needed clearances from office X or Y, you walked over there with your little paper in hand, grabbed the first frightened, lonely person you could find, and breathlessly thundered out, "YOU have to clear this now. YOU cannot refer it to anybody else. YOU have to make a decision! YOU have to say YES or NO!"
In addition, the rules required that we be out of the building before 5 pm because of some liability issues; only in the most extreme emergency could you stay past that bewitching hour. These limited hours meant an end to long, meandering staff meetings called at 6 pm, and not starting until 645 pm. Conversations were brief and to the point. Papers followed suit.
I loved going to work, secure in the knowledge that I would eventually get paid. It also made me realize that you could get rid of anywhere between two-thirds and three-fourths of the bureaucrats and things would work just fine.
BTW, just got notified that my Twitter account has been "locked" because I challenged some BS story told by Mark Ruffalo about conversations he supposedly had in Paris in which people expressed horror over Trump. Twitter says I advocated ethnic and racial hatred . . .
This was my Tweet:
@MarkRuffalo I give this the coveted Five Pinocchio Award . . .
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Saturday Musings & The Shutdown Apocalypse!
The Diplowife is in Spain with her sister celebrating el dia de San Sebastian in, well, San Sebastian (Donosti if you prefer). She keeps sending me pictures of amazing food. Two kids have left for a sports bar in Raleigh; one for apartment hunting in DC; and one with his wife (read her stuff!) for some rightist event in Manhattan. I am left with the dogs, and tasked with folding towels, and running the washing machine. Tough duty. So, of course, I am at the computer instead.
I must first remark that this, the first day of the #SchumerShutdown, dawned cold and bleak; the sun struggled to make itself felt, and its weak light cast long, sinister shadows throughout the woods surrounding my house. Those shadows, of course, come from the dying trees and the gasping fauna, unable to survive without the EPA having a full budget. The streets, too, are now almost impassable from the stacks of dead bodies, and from those millions of zombie-like Americans and immigrants left helpless and hopeless from the government shutdown, wandering the avenues and boulevards, crying, pleading, begging, all to no avail . . . I write in the full knowledge that by the time I post this piece, there will be no survivors to read it. I, therefore, leave it as a testament which might be read by alien visitors hundreds of years from now. Aliens in the sense of folks from the planet Xenon, not Mexico, you understand . . . Well, actually, I guess I will be OK as long as the people who write those Foreign Service retirement checks are deemed essential . . .
The strangeness grows every day.
It SEEMS (please note that word) that there is some sort of memo in the hands of Congress that will blow the lid off the Russian collusion investigation and could result in some serious political, legal, and bureaucratic shake-ups. The Republican Congressmen who have read it swear this is so, the Democrats not so much, but argue that it must be kept secret for "national security" reasons. I love it when the Dems get concerned about national security. Release thehounds memo, and let the chips fall where they might.
The biggest threat to national security (aside from Mexican interference in our national life) is the ongoing turmoil caused by the Russian collusion story so assiduously pushed by the Dems. If this memo has something important to say about it, let us see. I have no doubt that if the memo contained the smoking gun PROVING Trump-Putin collusion, the Dems would have leaked it to the NY Times long ago regardless of any threat to means, sources, and methods. My experience is that these "bombshell" memos often turn out to be something less than that, but, yet, however, nevertheless, perhaps, maybe, possibly it might well be in the national public interest to release this one. Let the American people judge. FREE THE MEMO!
This government shutdown is truly the weirdest such shutdown in my lifetime.
The Dems are shutting down the government because the President won't give them what they want on DACA. In other words, the Dems are more "concerned" about hundreds-of-thousands of illegal aliens, than they are about the proper functioning of our government and the well-being of hundreds-of-millions of Americans and LEGAL immigrants. Their "concern," of course, discussed at length many times in this humble blog (example, example, example) is with bringing in millions of poor and dependent voters. That's all. The Dems are losing some of their traditional supporters and need to replace them. The GOP would be idiotic to give in to the Dems' demands on DACA. So far, President Trump has played the Dems masterfully and I just hope he is not betrayed by GOPers going "wobbly," in Maggie Thatcher's wonderful phrase.
I must first remark that this, the first day of the #SchumerShutdown, dawned cold and bleak; the sun struggled to make itself felt, and its weak light cast long, sinister shadows throughout the woods surrounding my house. Those shadows, of course, come from the dying trees and the gasping fauna, unable to survive without the EPA having a full budget. The streets, too, are now almost impassable from the stacks of dead bodies, and from those millions of zombie-like Americans and immigrants left helpless and hopeless from the government shutdown, wandering the avenues and boulevards, crying, pleading, begging, all to no avail . . . I write in the full knowledge that by the time I post this piece, there will be no survivors to read it. I, therefore, leave it as a testament which might be read by alien visitors hundreds of years from now. Aliens in the sense of folks from the planet Xenon, not Mexico, you understand . . . Well, actually, I guess I will be OK as long as the people who write those Foreign Service retirement checks are deemed essential . . .
The strangeness grows every day.
It SEEMS (please note that word) that there is some sort of memo in the hands of Congress that will blow the lid off the Russian collusion investigation and could result in some serious political, legal, and bureaucratic shake-ups. The Republican Congressmen who have read it swear this is so, the Democrats not so much, but argue that it must be kept secret for "national security" reasons. I love it when the Dems get concerned about national security. Release the
The biggest threat to national security (aside from Mexican interference in our national life) is the ongoing turmoil caused by the Russian collusion story so assiduously pushed by the Dems. If this memo has something important to say about it, let us see. I have no doubt that if the memo contained the smoking gun PROVING Trump-Putin collusion, the Dems would have leaked it to the NY Times long ago regardless of any threat to means, sources, and methods. My experience is that these "bombshell" memos often turn out to be something less than that, but, yet, however, nevertheless, perhaps, maybe, possibly it might well be in the national public interest to release this one. Let the American people judge. FREE THE MEMO!
This government shutdown is truly the weirdest such shutdown in my lifetime.
The Dems are shutting down the government because the President won't give them what they want on DACA. In other words, the Dems are more "concerned" about hundreds-of-thousands of illegal aliens, than they are about the proper functioning of our government and the well-being of hundreds-of-millions of Americans and LEGAL immigrants. Their "concern," of course, discussed at length many times in this humble blog (example, example, example) is with bringing in millions of poor and dependent voters. That's all. The Dems are losing some of their traditional supporters and need to replace them. The GOP would be idiotic to give in to the Dems' demands on DACA. So far, President Trump has played the Dems masterfully and I just hope he is not betrayed by GOPers going "wobbly," in Maggie Thatcher's wonderful phrase.
Monday, January 15, 2018
On the Progressives' Sh*thole Country Conundrum
Warning: Tooting of the self-congratulatory horn about to take place. End of Warning.
This humble blog has called it right a few times--just a few, we did think Romney was going to win but . . . well, a stopped clock is wrong most of the time or whatever that saying is . . . Please note that the writings herein on race, national identity, and immigration were written years ago, and now the political system is taking up the debate much along the lines laid out back then (Look in the Diplomad archives and you will see). We, for example, now see the world's media and diplomatic bien pensants engaged in a great debate about the remarks President Trump supposedly made along the lines of "why do we get so many immigrants from sh*thole countries?" Did he or didn't he say it? Not clear. White House denials have been, in my view, masterfully evasive almost as though if he didn't say it, he would like credit for having said it but yet maintain plausible deniability that he did. The progs and many international capitals have taken the bait, and now thrash furiously on yet another Trump hook. Wheels within wheels with this President; we should not forget that this indeed is a president who plays 4-D chess; he has an amazing ability, an unparalleled ability, to troll the progs, make them explode in outrage and, thereby, reveal the slimy hypocrisy that flows though their scaly bodies.
Anyhow, this little blog claims rights to the phrase, "sh*thole countries," or at least co-authorship. Please see this little piece, originally written back in 2005, and reposted here in 2013. You will find the following paragraph,
I have written before (here in 2015, for example),
Here we see that the progs are akin to the Hamlet's bomb-making engineer, "hoisted on their own petard." We have to let anybody who wants into our countries because not to means those persons will suffer death, torture, and so on. They can't be returned to their own countries once they are here, because, well, see previous sentence.
Kinda sounds like they came from sh*thole places to me, no? How about to you? If they did not, then there should be no problem returning them home.
Trump wins; virtue signalers lose.
Next case, bailiff.
This humble blog has called it right a few times--just a few, we did think Romney was going to win but . . . well, a stopped clock is wrong most of the time or whatever that saying is . . . Please note that the writings herein on race, national identity, and immigration were written years ago, and now the political system is taking up the debate much along the lines laid out back then (Look in the Diplomad archives and you will see). We, for example, now see the world's media and diplomatic bien pensants engaged in a great debate about the remarks President Trump supposedly made along the lines of "why do we get so many immigrants from sh*thole countries?" Did he or didn't he say it? Not clear. White House denials have been, in my view, masterfully evasive almost as though if he didn't say it, he would like credit for having said it but yet maintain plausible deniability that he did. The progs and many international capitals have taken the bait, and now thrash furiously on yet another Trump hook. Wheels within wheels with this President; we should not forget that this indeed is a president who plays 4-D chess; he has an amazing ability, an unparalleled ability, to troll the progs, make them explode in outrage and, thereby, reveal the slimy hypocrisy that flows though their scaly bodies.
Anyhow, this little blog claims rights to the phrase, "sh*thole countries," or at least co-authorship. Please see this little piece, originally written back in 2005, and reposted here in 2013. You will find the following paragraph,
Many years ago, as we prepared our return to a tough posting in the Far Abroad after leave in the States, our son asked, "Do we have to go back to the 'turd' world?" That phrase, "redolent" with the wisdom possessed only by children, has stayed with me over these passing years. My son was right about the 'turd' world. What tips you off that you have arrived in a poor country, a truly, genuinely dirt-poor corner of the Far Abroad, is the smell. As you leave the airport, you notice a special "exotic" odor of rotting vegetation, garbage, and feces combined with a slight whiff of smoke. Once you're there a bit, you no longer notice. When you leave and come back, it slams you all over again. The kid was right: we had been and still do live in the "Turd World."Well? Well? Bueller? Bueller? Anybody?
I have written before (here in 2015, for example),
Around the world we see that just about everybody wants to live with the White Christian Dudes. We see this drive to live with White Christian Dudes every day along our southern border; Australians see it on their coasts and in the changing make up of their cities; Britons in the unceasing wave of migrants besieging their island. Canada's beautiful Vancouver in beautiful British Columbia has become a largely Asian city. Everywhere, it seems, the civilization built by White Christian Dudes is the magnet. Non-WCDs don't leave WCD countries; my family certainly didn't.I previously noted in 2013 that we had to recognize that,
Unlike liberals who see what they believe, conservatives tend to believe what we see. We do not see a country in the grip of racial tension, at least not until the charlatans begin to act.If our country and the West at large, indeed were fetid cesspools of racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, white privilege, brutal patriarchy, etc., would people all over the world risk everything they have, including their lives, to come to our countries?
Here we see that the progs are akin to the Hamlet's bomb-making engineer, "hoisted on their own petard." We have to let anybody who wants into our countries because not to means those persons will suffer death, torture, and so on. They can't be returned to their own countries once they are here, because, well, see previous sentence.
Kinda sounds like they came from sh*thole places to me, no? How about to you? If they did not, then there should be no problem returning them home.
Trump wins; virtue signalers lose.
Next case, bailiff.
Friday, January 12, 2018
On Martin Luther King, Jr.
MLK remains one of my favorite figures from recent American history. I admire and respect him a great deal, while recognizing he was a flawed human. We are coming up on his birthday commemoration so I have decided to repost a piece I wrote about him in 2014.
January 21, 2014
The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day in the US; the TV and other media were full of stories about King and his times, and what it all means today. He has been compared to Gandhi and Mandela, become an icon for American "progressives," and, of course, a historical symbol of the nonviolent civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. He won the Nobel Peace Prize, almost every major American city has a thoroughfare named for him, and, as noted, we have a national holiday in his honor--making him and Columbus the only ones to have such holidays. Gunned down in 1968, at the age of thirty-nine, he left the civil rights movement to less capable and less visionary successors who undermined his legacy and his goal of a color-blind nation.
Was he a great man? He showed great courage, commitment to his cause, insistence on nonviolence, strong political and leadership skills, patriotism, and became a highly eloquent spokesman for civil rights. "I Have a Dream" is one of the great speeches in the English language. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" more than equals any Thoreau or Gandhi writings, and is not something that today's civil rights leaders, such as they are, could match, nor could the typical graduate of almost any university in the world today. (The letter's pacing, erudition, and, above all, the surgical preciseness with which it takes down opposing arguments bring to mind General Sherman's letter to the Mayor of Atlanta.) King's life made a difference to millions of people. The answer, therefore, to this paragraph's question is yes, he was a great man.
That said, serious problems exist with some of the narrative spun about King, in particular, and the civil rights struggle, in general. Part of the problem, of course, is that King died young, enabling others, as with the two Kennedy brothers, to fill in the rest of the story and use it to further certain political agendas. King died short of his fortieth birthday; had he lived longer, presumably he would have evolved and, possibly, become a very different man than he was when he died--we will never know. What we do know is that the Democratic Party and their "progressive" media and education machines have rewritten the history of the civil rights struggle. This was driven home to me some years ago while visiting a college campus. The students assumed King was a Democrat, and the segregationists confronting the peaceful marchers, and using fire hoses, snarling police dogs, and truncheons, and wearing white hoods were Republicans. They assume a Republican killed King--today's college kids probably believe the Tea Party had him killed. That the exact opposite is true, shocks many. King came from a staunchly Republican family--his father, a prominent leader in his own right--openly endorsed Richard Nixon against JFK in the 1960 presidential election. The Democrats had a one-party lock on the South. The party of slave owners and secessionists, had become the party of Jim Crow, school segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, poll taxes, and on and on.
Many Americans, not to mention foreigners, do not realize not only that the Republican party was formed in opposition to slavery and that Lincoln was a Republican, but that the famous Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose rulings dismantled the legal basis for segregation and put serious limitations on the power of police, was a former Republican Governor of California. It was, furthermore, war hero and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who sent troops to Arkansas to enforce court-ordered desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. Congressional Republicans were the main supporters of civil rights legislation; their votes ensured passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, over the opposition of a significant bloc of Democrats--let us also not forget that Congressional Democrats for years blocked Republican efforts to pass federal anti-lynching legislation. All this, of course, is history, but an important chunk of American history that is being lost, distorted, or otherwise flushed down the memory sewer--along with the fact that anti-leftist J. Edgar Hoover proved the most formidable foe of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), an organization founded and staffed by Democrats, such as long-time Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.
Before I get back to King, let me address another issue that has been badly distorted and become something of a meme among the quasi-literate left. I refer to the idea that the parties have "switched places." This is something I have heard from some lefties who, knowing the true history of the Democratic and Republican Parties when it comes to race and civil rights, try to argue that that was then, and this is now. Since FDR or so, they argue the Democratic and the Republican Parties "switched" places on the race issue, with Republicans taking the role of protecting white privilege and keeping minorities, especially blacks, down. The truth is quite different. What happened was that the old party of slavers, segregationists, lynch mobs, and secessionists figured out that government programs and intervention were the means to deprive Republicans of a significant voter bloc. The aim was to keep black Americans dependent on the largesse of government and Democrat-run urban political machines. Anyone who doubts that should read the crude comment in which President Johnson revealed the real purpose underlying his massive social program expansion, i.e., to keep black Americans voting Democratic. The Democrats have succeeded admirably at this objective.
Back to King and the civil rights movement. By the time of his death, King was losing control of the movement. It was fragmenting. King's vision of a nonviolent effort was under assault by radical elements. The message of non-violence and concentration on individual liberty was losing attraction. The thirty-nine-year-old King seemed old, thundering out a message from another time. A new generation of black activists, inspired by the increasingly confrontational and violent atmosphere in the country challenged King for the spotlight, and found allies in violence in the largely white anti-Vietnam War movement. The civil rights struggle was becoming part of the noise of the very bad closing years of the 1960s, which saw bloody race riots shake nearly every major American city, and numerous incidents of domestic terrorism. In addition, what had been a largely grass-roots, private sector movement was being sabotaged by growing government involvement. Many black leaders were being syphoned off by government programs to "fight poverty." Activists increasingly focused on getting handouts to their followers rather than, as noted above, on King's more lofty, ancient-sounding focus on liberty, and the goal of having people judged not by their color but by the "content of their character." This new generation of government-oriented and dependent leaders did not fit in with King's conservative, Southern, church-based movement. They wanted racial turmoil, not racial harmony. We need also remember that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had put King under FBI surveillance, including the making of compromising tapes of King having extra-marital liaisons, providing the government excellent blackmail material against him.
All these factors, in my view, had begun to take a toll on King; he aged dramatically in appearance, and had begun talking about issues not directly related to the civil rights struggle, e.g., the Middle East, Vietnam. Had he lived longer, we likely would have seen King becoming radicalized, pushed leftward as he sought to retain control of the movement--but, as noted before, we will never know.
In sum, he was a great man with a great vision. His successors, many of them frauds of the first rank, largely have not been faithful to that vision of liberty and color-blindness, and we all have suffered for it.
January 21, 2014
The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day in the US; the TV and other media were full of stories about King and his times, and what it all means today. He has been compared to Gandhi and Mandela, become an icon for American "progressives," and, of course, a historical symbol of the nonviolent civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. He won the Nobel Peace Prize, almost every major American city has a thoroughfare named for him, and, as noted, we have a national holiday in his honor--making him and Columbus the only ones to have such holidays. Gunned down in 1968, at the age of thirty-nine, he left the civil rights movement to less capable and less visionary successors who undermined his legacy and his goal of a color-blind nation.
Was he a great man? He showed great courage, commitment to his cause, insistence on nonviolence, strong political and leadership skills, patriotism, and became a highly eloquent spokesman for civil rights. "I Have a Dream" is one of the great speeches in the English language. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" more than equals any Thoreau or Gandhi writings, and is not something that today's civil rights leaders, such as they are, could match, nor could the typical graduate of almost any university in the world today. (The letter's pacing, erudition, and, above all, the surgical preciseness with which it takes down opposing arguments bring to mind General Sherman's letter to the Mayor of Atlanta.) King's life made a difference to millions of people. The answer, therefore, to this paragraph's question is yes, he was a great man.
That said, serious problems exist with some of the narrative spun about King, in particular, and the civil rights struggle, in general. Part of the problem, of course, is that King died young, enabling others, as with the two Kennedy brothers, to fill in the rest of the story and use it to further certain political agendas. King died short of his fortieth birthday; had he lived longer, presumably he would have evolved and, possibly, become a very different man than he was when he died--we will never know. What we do know is that the Democratic Party and their "progressive" media and education machines have rewritten the history of the civil rights struggle. This was driven home to me some years ago while visiting a college campus. The students assumed King was a Democrat, and the segregationists confronting the peaceful marchers, and using fire hoses, snarling police dogs, and truncheons, and wearing white hoods were Republicans. They assume a Republican killed King--today's college kids probably believe the Tea Party had him killed. That the exact opposite is true, shocks many. King came from a staunchly Republican family--his father, a prominent leader in his own right--openly endorsed Richard Nixon against JFK in the 1960 presidential election. The Democrats had a one-party lock on the South. The party of slave owners and secessionists, had become the party of Jim Crow, school segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, poll taxes, and on and on.
Many Americans, not to mention foreigners, do not realize not only that the Republican party was formed in opposition to slavery and that Lincoln was a Republican, but that the famous Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose rulings dismantled the legal basis for segregation and put serious limitations on the power of police, was a former Republican Governor of California. It was, furthermore, war hero and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who sent troops to Arkansas to enforce court-ordered desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. Congressional Republicans were the main supporters of civil rights legislation; their votes ensured passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, over the opposition of a significant bloc of Democrats--let us also not forget that Congressional Democrats for years blocked Republican efforts to pass federal anti-lynching legislation. All this, of course, is history, but an important chunk of American history that is being lost, distorted, or otherwise flushed down the memory sewer--along with the fact that anti-leftist J. Edgar Hoover proved the most formidable foe of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), an organization founded and staffed by Democrats, such as long-time Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.
Before I get back to King, let me address another issue that has been badly distorted and become something of a meme among the quasi-literate left. I refer to the idea that the parties have "switched places." This is something I have heard from some lefties who, knowing the true history of the Democratic and Republican Parties when it comes to race and civil rights, try to argue that that was then, and this is now. Since FDR or so, they argue the Democratic and the Republican Parties "switched" places on the race issue, with Republicans taking the role of protecting white privilege and keeping minorities, especially blacks, down. The truth is quite different. What happened was that the old party of slavers, segregationists, lynch mobs, and secessionists figured out that government programs and intervention were the means to deprive Republicans of a significant voter bloc. The aim was to keep black Americans dependent on the largesse of government and Democrat-run urban political machines. Anyone who doubts that should read the crude comment in which President Johnson revealed the real purpose underlying his massive social program expansion, i.e., to keep black Americans voting Democratic. The Democrats have succeeded admirably at this objective.
Back to King and the civil rights movement. By the time of his death, King was losing control of the movement. It was fragmenting. King's vision of a nonviolent effort was under assault by radical elements. The message of non-violence and concentration on individual liberty was losing attraction. The thirty-nine-year-old King seemed old, thundering out a message from another time. A new generation of black activists, inspired by the increasingly confrontational and violent atmosphere in the country challenged King for the spotlight, and found allies in violence in the largely white anti-Vietnam War movement. The civil rights struggle was becoming part of the noise of the very bad closing years of the 1960s, which saw bloody race riots shake nearly every major American city, and numerous incidents of domestic terrorism. In addition, what had been a largely grass-roots, private sector movement was being sabotaged by growing government involvement. Many black leaders were being syphoned off by government programs to "fight poverty." Activists increasingly focused on getting handouts to their followers rather than, as noted above, on King's more lofty, ancient-sounding focus on liberty, and the goal of having people judged not by their color but by the "content of their character." This new generation of government-oriented and dependent leaders did not fit in with King's conservative, Southern, church-based movement. They wanted racial turmoil, not racial harmony. We need also remember that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had put King under FBI surveillance, including the making of compromising tapes of King having extra-marital liaisons, providing the government excellent blackmail material against him.
All these factors, in my view, had begun to take a toll on King; he aged dramatically in appearance, and had begun talking about issues not directly related to the civil rights struggle, e.g., the Middle East, Vietnam. Had he lived longer, we likely would have seen King becoming radicalized, pushed leftward as he sought to retain control of the movement--but, as noted before, we will never know.
In sum, he was a great man with a great vision. His successors, many of them frauds of the first rank, largely have not been faithful to that vision of liberty and color-blindness, and we all have suffered for it.
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