The Ku Klux Klan is rightfully despised by the overwhelming majority of Americans.
So it’s illuminating that its ideology found vigorous support at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. in mid-March, 2013.
Ku Klux Klan
K. Carl Smith, a black discussion leader, was a member of the Frederick Douglas Republicans. He was speaking about the role of race in the Republican Party when he was suddenly interrupted.
Scott Terry, a 30-year-old attendee from North Carolina, claimed that “young, white Southern males like myself” were being disenfranchised by Republicans.
Terry blamed the growth of diversity in the party and its outreach to black conservatives.
Smith then told how abolitionist leader Frederick Douglas wrote a letter to his former slaveowner forgiving him for having held him in bondage.
“For giving him shelter and food?” asked Terry, a member of the White Students Union at Towson University in Maryland.
Several members of the audience gasped and others laughed.
Terry later told the liberal blog, Think Progress, that he would “be fine” with an America where blacks were subservient to whites.
African-Americans, he said, should vote in Africa. He claimed the Tea Party agrees with him.
And, no doubt, many of its members privately do.
Terry claimed to be a descendent of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861-1865).
As a result, he didn’t totally disagree with slavery: “I can’t make one broad statement that categorically it was evil all the time because that’s not true.”
Another attendee, White Student Union “founder and commander” Matthew Heimbach, called civil rights activist Martin Luther King “a Marxist.”
Later, he said of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which investigates extremist, racist groups: “You look at the SPLC, as fake as they are, they talk about how patriot groups are increasing in the Obama era. With a black face in charge of the White House, of the federal government, we know it’s foreign. We know something isn’t right.”
According to the Atlantic Wire, 23 members of the White Student Union attended CPAC.
Racism is no stranger to high-ranking memers of the Republican party–and its right-wing allies.
In 2012, Inge Marler, a Tea Party leader in northern Arkansas, kicked off a rally with a joke implying that black Americans were all on welfare:
“A black kid asks his mom, ‘Mama, what’s a democracy?’
“‘Well, son, that be when white folks work every day so us po’ folks can get all our benefits.’
“‘But mama, don’t the white folk get mad about that?’
“‘They sho do, son. They sho do. And that’s called racism.’”
Inge Marler
The joke was followed by laughter and clapping from the Tea Party audience.
Only after Marler’s remarks came to the attention of the media did the Tea Party oust her from her position.
Since November 6, Republicans have been vigorously debating about why their candidate, Mitt Romney, lost the 2012 Presidential election.
Generally, their “findings” have boiled down to: We didn’t get our message out clearly enough.
On the contrary: There was no mistaking the message that Republicans were sending. Targeting a wide range of groups, this boiled down to: “America is for us–not you”:
- Republicans enraged and alienated Latinos by their constant anti-immigrant rhetoric–such as their nominee Mitt Romney’s comment that illegal aliens should “self-deport.”
- Republicans enraged and alienated blacks by their constant hate-filled and often racist attacks on President Barack Obama. Clint Eastwood’s empty chair “comedy” act at the Republican convention pleased his right-wing audience. But it outraged a great many others–especially blacks.
- Republicans enraged and alienated voters generally and minorities in particular by their blatant efforts to suppress the voting rights of their fellow citizens–especially those of non-whites. Republicans falsely claimed widespread voter fraud in areas where there was no evidence of it. When voter fraud was found, the culprit was a get-out-the-vote consulting firm hired by Republicans.
- Republicans allowed their party to be represented by Donald Trump, the infamous oligarch. When he repeatedly claimed that Obama wasn’t an American citizen, Romney refused to dump him as the hate-filled racist he was.
- Republicans refused to distance themselves from their “de facto” leader, right-wing pundit Rush Limbaugh. Romney refused to condemn Limbaugh for calling Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” after she told Congress that insurance companies should cover contraceptives.
- Republicans angered and alienated women by constantly talking about: Gutting Planned Parenthood; outlawing abortion; “legitimate rape” and banning birth control.
- Republicans alienated gays by their blatantly anti-gay sentiments and steadfast opposition to same-sex marriage.
Ultimately, Republicans came to depend for their success on a voting group that’s constantly shrinking–-aging white males. Having alienated blacks, gays, women, Latinos and youths, the Republicans found themselves with no other sources of support.
CPAC’s website claimed the event would showcase “America’s Future: The Next Generation of Conservatives. New Challenges, Timeless Principles.”
For many of the attending delegates, one of those “timeless principles” turned out to be old-fashioned racism.
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ABORTING DEMOCRACY
In Bureaucracy, Law, Politics, Social commentary on July 19, 2013 at 2:06 amOn July 13, the Texas Senate passed an anti-abortion bill that promotes unforn fetuses over the rights of adult women.
The bill was passed in a vote of 19-11.
The law:
Democrats countered that childbirth is more dangerous than abortion and there have been no serious problems with women taking abortion drugs at home. They introduced amendments to add exceptions for cases of rape and incest, and allow doctors more leeway in prescribing abortion-inducing drugs.
The right-wing Republican majority overruled these proposed changes–and sent the bill to rightist Republican Governor Rick Perry to sign into law.
On July 17, Planned Parenthood informed staffers that three of its facilities in Texas would be closing–a major goal of the legislation.
So what’s behind all this fetus fanaticism?
Several factors.
First, there is an energized constituency for politicians willing to wave this red flag. Almost every major Republican Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan has tapped into this voting bloc. And each has found plenty of votes to be gotten from it.
Second, many fetus fanatics are more than a little obsessed with sex. These are the same people who, in Victorian times, used “white meat” when ordering a chicken breast and “dark meat” when ordering a chicken thigh.
Third, many fetus fanatics are flat-out hypocrites. For example: Representative Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), an anti-abortion, “family values” doctor, had an affair with a patient and later pressured her to get an abortion.
Fourth, many fetus fanatics feel guilty about their own past sexual transgressions-–especially if these resulted in pregnancy. And they want to prevent others from living the same life they did.
Fifth, many fetus fanatics embrace contradictory goals. On one hand, most of them claim they want to “get government off the backs of the people.”
That usually means allowing corporations to pollute, sell dangerous products and treat their employees as slaves.
On the other hand, they want to insert the government into the vagina of every woman. That means empowering State and Federal authorities to prevent women from getting an abortion-–even in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
Sixth, many fetus fanatics simply dislike women. They fear and resent the women’s movement, which has given women the right to enter the workforce and compete directly with men.
And what they hate most is the legal right of a woman to avoid becoming pregnant via birth control-–or to abort the result of a male’s sperm if they do.
They see this as a personal rejection. Perhaps it reminds many of them of their own failures in romance/marriage.
The Right is made up overwhelmingly of white males. And many of these men would feel entirely at home with a Christianized version of the Taliban. They long for a world where women meekly cater to their every demand and believe only what their male masters approve for them to believe.
The trouble for these men is they don’t speak Arabic.
Seventh, many leaders of the fetus-fanatics movement are independently wealthy. This means that even if abortion could be outlawed for the vast majority, they could always bribe a willing doctor-–here or abroad-–to perform such an operation on their wife, daughter and/or mistress.
For them, there is always an escape clause.
Eighth, many fetus fanatics are not truly “pro-life.” They totally oppose abortion under most-–if not all–-circumstances. But they also fully support capital punishment, going to war for almost any reason, wholesale massacres of wildlife and despoiling of the environment, and even nuclear war.
And many of those who fanatically defend the right of a fetus to emerge from the womb just as fanatically oppose welfare for those mothers who can’t support that newborn.
Ninth, many fetus fanatics believe that since their religion teaches that abortion is wrong, they have a moral duty to enforce that belief on others.
This is especially true for evangelical Christians. These are the same people who condemn Muslims-–such as those in Saudi Arabia-–for segregating women, forbidding them to drive and forcing them to wear head scarfs or chadors-–loose, usually black robes.
But while they condemn Islamics for their general intolerance of others’ religious beliefs, they lust to impose their own upon those who belong to other churches. Or who belong to no church at all.
Tenth, many fetus fanatics are just as opposed to birth control as they are to abortion. Thus, when Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke asked Congress to require insurance companies to cover birth control, Rush Limbaugh branded her a “slut” and a “prostitute.”
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