8/21/2007

What's For Lunch Boy!!!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its interesting that you associate a quote from a Republican president with a picture of a man emanicpated by the first Republican president.

Wouldn't it be more historically accurate to associate this picture with a Democrat, the party that defended slavery, ran against Lincoln in 1864 on an anti-war and pro-secessionist platform, and dominated the South with Jim Crow laws until the 1960's?

Think George Wallace and Bull Connor. And remember, too, that Strom Thurmond, originally a Democrat and later a "Dixiecrat," ran for President on an anti-civil rights platform in 1948.

The idea that Republicans are the root of African-American problems is not only nonsense, it is a shameless attempt to re-write the sorrid racist history of the Democrat party.

Sunny Badger said...

Anon:

You seem a little defensive about this post. I was aiming at the rhetoric of Reagan's statement. Of course, the quote is associated to Reagan, but it is doubtful that he came up with the those words. His speech writer most likely strung those words together.

Do you think the Republican Party of George W. Bush is the same Republican Party of Lincoln. Of course, the "sorrid racist history" of the Democratic Party, e.g., the southern Democrats have all moved to the Republican Party of today and have morphed into the redneck, religious fanatic, homophobic, gun-totting, NASCAR-loving, GED-earning Jethro Bodine's who now make up the base of today's Republican Party. The ones who don't waste time learning the facts, because the slogan crafters provide the one-liners that pull their political puppet strings.

Slavery and racism was alive and well in the USA long before the Republican Party was founded in 1854. I believe it was those north liberals in the Democratic Party that were the abolitionists.

You need to get your history lessons straight.

Anonymous said...

I’m not the one being defensive here. My concerns are historical accuracy, and curbing the rampant revisionism that modern liberals and democrats attempt to foist upon an undereducated American public.

Your unfair description of common working folks who identify with conservative values is elitist and condescending. If you honestly think that the people who elected Republicans in 9 of the last 14 presidential elections are such Neanderthals, I don’t think you know much about your own fellow citizens.

And if you think liberal Democrats led the abolitionist charge, you are embarrassingly uninformed. The fact is, “religious fanatics” were the source of the abolitionist sentiments in the North, a movement fought aggressively by the Democrat party from about 1850 to 1864. Immediately after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction period, many southern blacks were elected to local and national offices, but once Reconstruction ended in 1876, Democrats reasserted control, swept blacks out of office, and established Jim Crow laws that kept blacks oppressed and disenfranchised until the Civil Rights period of the 1960’s.

This idea that the Republican party is responsible for black oppression and poverty is just not credible. True, Republicans want to reduce black dependency on welfare and social programs, but as a means of helping them regain dignity, respect, and self-sufficiency – not to punish them or to block their opportunities. Some argue that the Democratic party seeks to keep blacks on the “plantation” of victim-psychology and government dependency – the better to ensure their reliable votes. Others think it has more to do with latent guilt amongst the so-called progressives that comprise today’s Democrat party. I don’t particularly agree with those interpretations either, but again, the Republicans are not the bad guys here.

I have my history lessons straight, but I’m not so sure that you do. Go and look up just who were the rabid racists of the period between 1876 and 1960, from the KKK to the Bull Connors to the George Wallaces. Most all were Democrats. That’s my point, because that’s the fact. You may wish it otherwise, but you can’t change history.

Sunny Badger said...

Anon:

I do not dispute your interpretation of history. I do not think you see me defending the Democrats anywhere in this post.

I still do not understand where you get the idea that the point of this post is to show that Black suppression and poverty. I think that pretty much goes under a heading of responsibility attributed to the white man in general.

Reagan's words represent the boss man's rhetoric and stratospheric rhetoric. When you get your boots on the ground of reality, the actual picture is different.

When did the Dixiecrats flee to the arms of the Republican Party? After the passage of civil rights legislation and school desegregation in the 1960s. I don't believe those were the Karl Rove Young Republicans participating in the Freedom marches down South and taking the bullets and beatings to help loosen the noose of racism running rampant in the South...and the North for that matter.

I think you are pissed off because I used Reagan's speechwriters words. Maybe I was inspired to do this post after listening to Rush Limbaugh and Jason Lewis earlier in the day.

Anonymous said...

No, I'm not pissed off.

But just for the record and the edification of you and your readers, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was filibustered for weeks by Southern Democrats, and when LBJ, to his everlasting credit, forced Congress to vote on the legislation, the tallies showed a greater percentage of Republicans (80%) than democrats (68%) voting for the bill.

So explain why you think the Dixiecrats would want to join the GOP, a more pro-civil rights party than their own Democrat party?

Sunny Badger said...

I stand corrected on Thomas Jefferson's connection to the writing of the Constitution.
---

Authors of the Constitution
Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania was put in charge of the committee to draft the final copy of the Constitution. Other men who had much to do with writing the Constitution included John Dickinson, Gouverneur Morris, Edmund Randolph, Roger Sherman, James Wilson, and George Wythe. Morris was given the task of putting all the convention's resolutions and decisions into polished form. Morris actually "wrote" the Constitution. The original copy of the document is preserved in the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C.

Jacob Shallus who, at the time, was assistant clerk of the Pennsylvania State Assembly, and whose office was in the same building in which the Convention was held, was given the task of engrossing the Constitution prior to its being signed.

You can get more information from the World Book Encyclopedia on line and these sites: http://hometown.aol.com/we4amhis/AmGov.html http://www.teacheroz.com/colonies.htm

Here is more input from others:


The U.S. Constitution is the work of several men, directly and indirectly. The three most notable Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Thomas Paine. The group of men involved in the writing of the Constitution are generally referred to as the "founding fathers".

No one person wrote it. Twelve of the thirteen states sent delegates to a convention to revise the Articles of Confederation and the whole convention worked on it. After the political questions were all resolved a committee of style was formed to put everything into formal words. I believe most of the resulting language was produced by Gouvenor Morris but I may be wrong.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was in France as a dipolmat during the Constitional Convention

Actually the man really known for writing the Constitution was actually Mr. James Madison... but there might really be more who helped him right it.

No one person wrote the Constitution of the United States. The entire membership of the Constitutional Convention, at least those delegates who stayed for the whole thing, contributed to its development. When all of the ideas had been hashed out a Committee of Style was appointed to set it out in proper legal language. Gouvernor Morris did most of the committee's work, so he is responsible for most of the specific phrasing in the constitution but, as said, they had all contributed to the ideas therein.

Primary Author: James Madison (Drafted the Virginia Plan)

link: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_wrote_the_US_Constitution