Woody, Haley & The Klan

[peejay 327]

Woody, Haley & The Klan

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted 12/24/2010 ET

Updated 12/24/2010 ET

"In May 1866, a little group of young men in the Tennessee village of Pulaski, finding their time hang heavily on their hands after the excitement of the field, so lately abandoned, formed a secret club for the mere pleasure of association, for private amusement -- for anything that might break the monotony of the too quiet place, as their wits might work upon the matter, and one of their number suggested that they call themselves the Kuklos, the Circle."

This prettified depiction of the founding of the Ku Klux Klan is from "A History of the American People" by Princeton professor and future President Woodrow Wilson.

The main activities of the Klan, wrote Wilson, were "pranks," "mischief" and "frolicking." Occasionally they did prey upon blacks, Wilson conceded, but black fears of the Klan were "comic."

In "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past," Bruce Bartlett relates countless such anecdotes to show that while the Republican Party is endlessly smeared as racist, at its worst, it could not hold a candle to the party of Wilson and FDR.

What brings this history up is the media assault on Gov. Haley Barbour for his answer to an interviewer's question as to why his hometown, Yazoo City, avoided the violence that attended the desegregation of other cities in the Mississippi of his youth. Haley's reply:

"You heard of the Citizens' Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City, they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their a-- run out of town. If you had a job, you'd lose it. If you had a store, they'd see nobody shopped there. We didn't have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City."

No one has contradicted the facts as stated by Haley, that the Citizens' Council of Yazoo City consisted of "town leaders" who did not want any Klan violence ripping their town apart.

But if Haley had meant to leave the impression that the White Citizens' Councils were promoting peaceful integration, that would have been laughable. Like almost all the U.S. senators from the 11 states of the Old Confederacy who signed the Dixie Manifesto opposing the Brown decision, the White Citizens' Councils believed in massive resistance to integration.

After 24 hours of media bashing, Haley sought to silence his tormenters with this clarification:

"My point was my town rejected the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody should construe that to mean the town leadership were saints, either. Their vehicle, called the 'Citizens' Council,' is totally indefensible, as is segregation. It was a difficult and painful era for Mississippi, the rest of the country and especially African-Americans who were persecuted in that time."

Thus did Haley throw the town fathers of Yazoo City, many of whom he must have come to know as friends, under the bus to restore his acceptability to media elites, some of whom he probably detests.

Such are the demands of political advancement in America.

Yet, as Voltaire observed, history is a pack of lies agreed upon.

Undeniably, across the South in the 1950s and 1960s, there was broad and deep resistance to integration. But it is also true that all the Senate signers of the Dixie Manifesto and all but two of the House signers were Democrats in good standing in the party of JFK and LBJ.

And while civil right workers and others were brutally killed in the 1960s, the real racial violence occurred in the North -- in the Harlem riot of 1964, the Watts riot of 1965, the Detroit and Newark riots of 1967 and the wave of riots that broke out in scores of cities after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis. There were days of looting and burning in Washington, D.C.

Who was responsible for that wave of racial violence? Was it the black rioters themselves? The Democratic machines and mayors that ran almost all of the Northern cities? The Johnson administration?

Because it was surely not Republicans, who in the 1960s were nonexistent in the South and shut out of power in Washington and most major cities and state capitals after JFK's victory and LBJ's landslide.

The Nixon White House is endlessly denounced for a "Southern Strategy" that captured all 11 states of the Old Confederacy in 1972. But Nixon's vice president was a pro-civil rights governor, Spiro Agnew of Maryland, who had defeated George P. ("your-home-is-your-castle") Mahoney, a Democrat who ran in 1966 on his opposition to open housing.

In the six presidential elections in which Wilson and FDR topped the ticket, Democrats carried all 11 Southern states every time.

Outside of Missouri, Deep South states were the only ones Adlai Stevenson carried in 1956. The sainted Adlai balanced both his tickets with Dixiecrats: John Sparkman of Alabama and Estes Kefauver of Tennessee.

As Haley Barbour can attest, liberal hypocrisy is exceeded only by liberal amnesia about who kept them in power from 1933 to 1968.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=40786

[Danno 1,228]

Wishing Pat and Family a Merry Christmas

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I think Pat left out a few facts.

1) The Democrats all but purged the Dixiecrats from their party, after the 1968 Socialist Revolution.

2) By 1980, most of them had taken residence in the Republican party, all but displacing the Liberal wing of the Republican party

3) The election of 1994 and the creation of the Gingrich Congress firmly established the Republican Party as a Southern populist party with a massive shift of southern Democrats switching parties on property rights and gun issues.

4) Lincoln's party is dead, as is Jackson's. What we have left is a populist leaning Republican isolationist party and a socialist leaning Democratic antiwar party.

Edited December 25, 2010 by Some Old Guy

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

The Klan always was, and is, a branch of the Democrat party.

[Pee-wee Herman 2]

The Klan always was, and is, a branch of the Democrat party.

I don't know why you yanks insist on this illusion of individuality.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I don't know why you yanks insist on this illusion of individuality.

Nope. Too many syllables to be Eric. I am thinking MC or Duncan.

[Ban Hammer 13,669]

Nope. Too many syllables to be Eric. I am thinking MC or Duncan.

he had help.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

he had help.

Booyah is at Eric's house?

[Pee-wee Herman 2]

Booyah is at Eric's house?

Stop calling me Eric.

[Ban Hammer 13,669]

and now eric is from britain pakistan

[Pee-wee Herman 2]

Wrong again friend.

[james&olya 1,121]

I think Pat left out a few facts.

1) The Democrats all but purged the Dixiecrats from their party, after the 1968 Socialist Revolution.

2) By 1980, most of them had taken residence in the Republican party, all but displacing the Liberal wing of the Republican party

3) The election of 1994 and the creation of the Gingrich Congress firmly established the Republican Party as a Southern populist party with a massive shift of southern Democrats switching parties on property rights and gun issues.

4) Lincoln's party is dead, as is Jackson's. What we have left is a populist leaning Republican isolationist party and a socialist leaning Democratic antiwar party.

I was going to try and point out the changes and shifts in thinking in the parties but you have done it very well!

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Stop calling me Eric.

You must be the man from the hamburger train? Right?

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

I was going to try and point out the changes and shifts in thinking in the parties but you have done it very well!

There was no change except in presentation. The Dems still support the enslavement of people, currently little brown people, in underpaid undocumented jobs to avoid the laws they pass to "protect workers" The Dems still support the enslavement of people in government welfare programs.

Changing the wrapper did not change the content.

[peejay 327]

There was no change except in presentation. The Dems still support the enslavement of people, currently little brown people, in underpaid undocumented jobs to avoid the laws they pass to "protect workers" The Dems still support the enslavement of people in government welfare programs.

Changing the wrapper did not change the content.

I don't exactly see it as slavery since it is more or less voluntary. These illegal aliens pay money to to be voluntarily trafficked here. They are actively culpable from start to finish. There is no one from the US government that is stopping them from leaving. The sleazeballs in power actively deter any efforts to deter illegal immigration and have done so for decades for their own self serving gain. And in doing so they actively encourage illegal immigration. IMO it is exploitation and self serving sleazy political shenanigans rather than slavery. The political and business classes use illegal aliens for their own potential gain, both political and monetary. The American people are the real victims here not the illegal aliens. It's our country not theirs'. In the end they are just being used against us. Cheap labor and cheap votes. Neither is in the American people's best interests. I pity myself and my country more than I pity them. They are citizens of and the responsibility of their own government. That's the way I see it.