I can’t believe that we’re really debating the Civil Right Act of 1964, but that’s what we’re forced to do now that Kentucky Republicans nominated a Paulist as their U.S. Senate candidate. Now, Princeton University professor Sean Wilentz is correct to note that the vote on the Civil Rights Act basically defined the future history of the two major parties. But, in defending the Democratic Party, he goes too far. One thing that really annoys me is the tendency of progressives to whitewash the history of racism in the Democratic Party in the years leading up to the vote on the Civil Rights Act. It was the party of Jim Crow, plain and simple. Prior to passage of the bill, a Republican couldn’t get elected as dogcatcher in the South. And why was that? Because they were the Party of Lincoln.
So, despite the Democratic Party being the vehicle for FDR’s New Deal and the post-war national consensus, it had such a detestable record on race that I doubt I could have associated with it or called myself a Democrat. It was only the watershed and courageous decision of Lyndon Johnson, himself a Southern Democrat, to end Jim Crow that made the Democratic Party something worth belonging to. It’s true that northern Democrats like Hubert Humphrey were instrumental to transforming the Democratic Party into something less offensive than South Africa’s Apartheid government, but until they succeeded that’s exactly what the party resembled. It was an absolute blight on the nation and its ideals and a constant source of aid and comfort to the Soviets in our competition for the hearts and minds of the Third World.
Well, the Soviets are gone, and the Northern Democrats won the battle for the heart and soul of their party. But the Republicans have stepped into the breach to make sure that a good part of the world regards us with fear, suspicion, or just outright hatred.
A friend of mine on facebook is friends with Glen Pizzolorusso, one of the guys featured in “this american life’s” giant pool of money (warning, pdf).
This is a guy who made his living selling bad mortgages to poor people he knew couldn’t afford them. And of course, he’s totally defending Rand Paul.
Stupid mf doesn’t even realize Italians were discriminated against back in the day.
there’s always a new source of cheap labor to discriminate against.
what’s awesome is the dude is so dumb he doesn’t even realize it. i’ve been tormenting him for the past hour. I’m hoping to give him a stroke.
True, and hardly unique to the USA.
Mr. B: keep pushing the meme that 1964 was not and is not 2010. The Civil Rights Act was the political clash of Northern and Western liberals and moderates against Southern Conservatives (and Barry Goldwater in Arizona.) There used to be a ton of moderate Republicans who would make some of today’s Blue Dogs look like the southern conservative democrats of the 60’s who were called Boll Weevils.
I don’t see how anyone can whitewash the racial history of the Dem party — it’s too obvious. The point is, it was the Dems who chose to sacrifice their base to end Jim Crow, and its segregationist members switched en masse to create today’s Republican Party. The Dems’ stand was one of the greatest acts of political courage in the nation’s history. Today, every thread of GOP ideology can be traced back to its rebirth as the voice of the racist/segregationist dead enders. But I do have to give Paul and the GOP some credit for incredible chutzpah in their effort to turn history on its head.
Progressives do it every single day, every time they compare today’s Democratic Party unfavorably with FDR’s.
I think you’re reaching. Parts of FDR’s party created a great vision for America and followed it up with the radical changes needed to advance that vision. Not something we find very clearly in today’s party. In that regard, it’s at least reasonable to find the party of today lacking in comparison.
That doesn’t mean progressives don’t see the dark side that went along with the achievements. The racism was the worst of it, but there were all kinds of extreme violations of human rights for Japanese-Americans, “communists”, and others, and gay rights and abortion rights weren’t even discussable. Everybody knows that. It’s kind of like being inspired by the founders’ stated ideals even while knowing at the same time that they grossly violated every one of them.
I don’t know. I think we look back at the totality of FDR’s work, including Truman and Eisenhower furtherance of that work, and we compare it to the minute details of Obama’s year and a half in office. On issues of civil rights, there’s simply no comparison. Obama is about to pass very significant economic reforms that can’t be compared to anything but FDR’s. He’s already done more for access to health care than anyone since LBJ. Obama could quit now and be considered the second or third best president in the modern era. And he’s only able to do it because of his party in Congress. As painfully frustrating as the modern Democratic Party can be, our present Congress is the best one we’ve had in history.
It’s progress. We’ve moved ahead 100 years from the recent discussion of the Confederacy.
Speaking of (ahem) historical omissions, how about just a teeny mention of the Dem president who actually started the ball rolling on major CR legislation — JFK in June 1963?
Imo, it took far more political courage for Northern liberal Kennedy, barely elected in 60 and lacking a clear majority for it both in the public and in Congress at the outset of the bill’s journey, to offer a strong CR bill at that time, especially leading into a re-election year.
Before we anoint St Lyndon for such courage on civil rights, let’s not overlook another fact, which he acknowledged yrs later to historian Doris Kearns: namely that he was motivated to get CR enacted in 64 primarily because if he had done nothing or gone for yet another toothless bill like he did in 1957, the liberals in Congress and in the CR movement would have gone after him immediately and his political fortunes for 1964 would have been in jeopardy. Hard not to conclude that essentially once LBJ took over, he had no choice, if he wanted a good political future, but to continue to push for what was Kennedy’s CR bill. And it doesn’t take much courage to do what one essentially is forced to do …
Kennedy had courage. He deserves credit. But to frame this as LBJ merely doing what he had to do? He didn’t have to do it. He didn’t have too many friends who wanted him to do it. It ripped his party in two and ultimately badly damaged it in his region of the country. His predecessor got a bullet in the brain for his efforts. I think he had a lot of good reasons not to go large on civil rights. You can’t take anything away from Lyndon on this issue. And it’s wrong to suggest that he only did it to make his renomination easier.
Thanks for that Booman. LBJ did a lot of heavy lifting for the civil rights bill and noone seems to want to give him any credit.
When the bill passed LBJ said ” we just lost the south”.
not many politicians would have risked losing an entire region to pass a civil rights bill.
Well, I’ll take those first two sentences of yours
frame ’em and highlight ’em. Because getting Kennedy’s name in these discussions where it belongs was the whole point of my post.
As for the rest, we’re unlikely to agree re motives since I view Johnson as primarily driven, all his adult life, by personal political ambition, and almost never by party or ideological concerns. His own VP Humphrey said after it was all over that Johnson was never much for building the party [look at the way he diminished the DNC during his presidency for instance, to the party’s detriment in 1966], nor could he be sure that LBJ could even be called much of a Democrat.
So I feel I’m on pretty safe ground when I underscore the importance of what LBJ told Doris Kearns about that one self-interested motive he had in mind, and I seriously downplay the party concerns he supposedly expressed to an aide that gets repeated unskeptically down through the years as if Lyndon gave a damn about the future of the Democratic Pty.
I do credit Johnson with the deed of helping CR pass, it’s important to note that, but I just don’t assign him all those extra-credit points for courage some do.
take more in federal $$ than it pays in in income taxes?
THAT ought to be something Mr. Paul discusses in front of a camera….