I have to (or, should I say, get to) make my weekly submission to the Watcher’s Council for a vote. I’m torn between two posts, and wonder if you have an opinion as to which I should submit.
The first is a post I did last week, I know what you’re again, but what are you for?, which addresses aggressive atheism and the vacuum it leaves in its wake — a vacuum often filled with violence.
The second is a post I did last night, Illogical thinking, where I try to tackle the false logic that enables the Democrats to live off their one shining moment in the Civil Rights era.
Let me know if you have any thoughts on this, because I’m paralyzed by indecision.
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I liked last week’s post on atheism better than yesterday’s on illogical thinking, and I suspect you’d get more points with the Watcher’s Council for big thoughts than for rhetorical analysis, good as it was.
I also think that the last week post is better, but that is a, probably, irrational choice based solely on personal preference, since todays post is also very well done
Not irrational at all, Buzz. I think both you and Patrick may be on to something. I really liked last week’s post, and inclined towards it, but then got all befuddled by last night’s post!
I vote for vacuum, Book. But I’m biased since I consider that the ability to recognize religions is very important to improving them. If you can’t recognize your own beliefs as a religion, then you’re hopeless in terms of improving anything.
You have to see the problem to fix it. And if you think a gun is a balonie sandwich, you might have a hard problem fixing things.
I’m also against your latter post because its history was incomplete. Without the distillation of Robert Byrd and the filibuster [which if I recall, was done by Byrd, the KKK guy], the history is incomplete.
In examining the crucial civil-rights issues of the 1960s we should: (1) revisit the role Republicans (and particularly conservative Republicans) played in the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, and (2) reexamine the original intent of the bill itself. Contrary to popular amnesia, it was the congressional Republicans, not the Democrats, who were most responsible for this great victory for equal civil rights for all Americans.
The civil-rights bill of 1964 was enacted with strong bipartisan and bi-ideological (conservative and liberal) support. But, the credit for the civil-rights victory has gone almost exclusively to liberals and Democrats, particularly to Senator Hubert Humphrey (D, Minn.) in Congress, and to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. However, much of the hard work of advancing the legislation was done by congressional Republicans — conservative stalwarts including Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, Charles Halleck of Indiana, William McCulloch of Ohio, Robert Griffin of Michigan, Robert Taft Jr. of Ohio, Clarence Brown of Ohio, Roman Hruska of Nebraska, and moderates such as Thomas Kuchel of California, Kenneth Keating of New York, and Clark MacGregor of Minnesota. All of these Republicans served as major leaders of the pro-civil-rights coalition either as floor managers or captains for different sections of the bill.
Although the Democrats controlled both houses of the Congress at the time, a much-higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the civil-rights bill. For example, in the House, Republicans voted for civil rights by a margin of 79 percent to 21 percent, 136-35. The Democrats’ margin was 153-91 or 63 percent to 37 percent.
However, the single-most-important vote for the legislation was the attempt to cut off the anti-civil-rights filibuster in the Senate. In order for the bill to pass, civil-rights supporters needed two thirds of the Senate to break a filibuster by the opposition. Republicans voted overwhelmingly to break the filibuster by 81.8 percent (27-6), but only 65.7 percent of the Democrats voted to end the filibuster (44-23). Thus, if only Republicans in the Congress had voted, any potential filibuster would easily have been overridden. But, if only Democrats had voted, the pro-civil-rights forces would not have been able to obtain the necessary two/thirds vote to break the filibuster and the civil-rights bill would have died. No Republicans in Congress, no civil-rights bill — it is as simple as that.
Only a handful of Republicans opposed the civil-rights bill. The most prominent among them was Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who became the party’s presidential candidate in 1964. Interestingly, Goldwater had always been a strong supporter of racial equality and supported the Eisenhower civil-rights bills of 1957 and 1960 that strengthened voting rights for African Americans. As Lee Edwards noted in The Conservative Revolution: “As chief of staff of the Arizona National Guard he [Goldwater] had pushed for desegregation of the guard two years before President Truman desegregated the U.S. armed forces.” Goldwater stated that workforce discrimination was “morally wrong,” but worried that in the future the federal government might “require people to discriminate on the basis of color or race or religion” and, thus, in the end, opposed the bill.
The NPR or Left of center position has always been that the Democrats were the leading cause of the movement.
I think one of the reasons you mentioned Northern Democrats, is because you were searching for some kind of analogy or example of the bad logic of the Democrats. But this ties you up in knots over the rest of the history, Book. Which is why I think your former post is the better.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1953700
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=5436
If you read the NPR bit carefully, what they imply is that the South is racist and has always been racist, therefore that is why folks went to the Republicans in the South. But if the real history is that the Democrats were beholden to race interests, because of their traditions of supporting the KKK, segregation, and violence against equality in the South, then that paints a new light on the South’s eagerness to vote for Reagan and throw away the Democrat tradition of race baiting and exploitation.
The NOrthern Demos were an exception to the rule.
I am not all that against the logic that if your tradition is one of vileness, that this might mean you will become vile yourself right now, right here. That may or may not be the point they are making about Jews, that because their traditional history is X, that this means Jews are prone to X now.
It is just that you have to get the tradition fracking right, before you go talking about what this leads to or not. History is a complex beast, and oftentimes it just isn’t one thing that leads to what we have right now, but a lot of things. If people focus on one thing, then sure, it might give folks a sense that the Jews are X.
But for the Democrats, book, it just wasn’t “one thing”. It was their entire history. People like Robert Byrd didn’t go away, Book. They are still here, and in power, in the Democrat party. In point of fact, Robert Byrd is third in line for the Presidency…. after nancy PillowC of course.
I honestly don’t think the comparison with the civil Rights deal does much good in relation to the Jewish thing.
I vote for glory days of the liberals. We’re doomed to live forever in 1966 with these birds.
Bookie,
I go for the Illogical Thinking – mostly because I like its unusual history lesson.
I go with the post on religion. It is more tightly written than the Illogical post. But both do make you think, as you always do, BW.
Got to go.
Al
Is there a third choice? Just kidding ,relax ,take a deep breath.You did good with the amount of time you put in.Both articles are very funny. Either one will do ! Good luck !!